It would be easy to write a story about Venezuela’s energy problems and, in it, focus on the corruption and mismanagement that have taken place. This would make it look like Venezuela’s problems were different from everyone else’s. Taking this approach, it would be easy to argue that the problems wouldn’t have happened, if better leaders had been elected and if those leaders had chosen better policies.
I think that there is far more behind Venezuela’s financial and energy problems than corruption and mismanagement.
As I see the story, Venezuela realized that it had huge oil resources relative to its population, back as early as the 1920s. While these oil resources are substantial, the country misestimated how high a standard of living that these resources could support. To try to work around the issue of setting development goals too high, the country chose the path of distributing the benefits of oil exports in an almost socialistic manner. This socialistic approach, plus increased debt, hid the problem of a standard of living that could not really be supported for many years. Recent problems in Venezuela show that these approaches cannot be permanent solutions. In fact, it seems likely that Venezuela will be one of the first oil-exporting nations to collapse.
How the Subsidy from High-Priced Exported Oil Works
Oil is a strange resource. The cost of oil production tends to be quite low, especially for oil exporters. The selling price is based on a world oil price that changes from day to day, depending on what some would call “demand.” The difference between the selling price and the cost of extraction can make oil exporters rich. In a sense, this difference might be considered an “energy surplus” that is being distributed to the economies of oil exporters. The greater the energy surplus being distributed, the greater the quantity of goods and services (made with energy products) that can be purchased from outside the country with the hard currency that is made available through the sale of oil.
In fact, the existence of such a profitable resource tends to crowd out development of other, less profitable, enterprises. Thus, Venezuela has tended to be a country whose economy revolves around oil. There is a small amount of agriculture and quite a bit of services, but for the most part, the goods used by the economy must be purchased from outside the country. Furthermore, nearly all of the revenue that is available to purchase these goods comes from the sale of oil exports. Thus, the economy tends to follow the fortune of oil sales.
Figure 1 shows a rough estimate of the benefit that Venezuela’s oil exports have provided in inflation-adjusted US dollars. Based on this approach, the per capita benefit from oil exports seems to have peaked very early, in about 1981.
Figure 1. Venezuela per capita value of oil exports, calculated by multiplying Venezuela’s year-by-year quantity of oil exports by the price in 2017$ of oil, and dividing by estimated population. Both price and quantity determined using BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy. Population based on 2017 United Nations middle estimates.
The people of Venezuela did not realize that the amount of benefit that oil exports would provide would start falling very early. Instead, leaders set their sights on living standards that would be affordable if the level of subsidy that the economy could obtain from oil exports were to remain as high as during the 1973 to 1981 period.
Figure 2 shows how much energy the population, on average, consumed over the 1965 to 2017 period. This figure shows that energy consumption per capita rose dramatically between 1973 and 1981. In this way, citizens were able to benefit from the huge rise in per capita oil export revenue, shown in Figure 1.
Figure 2. Energy consumption per capita for Venezuela, based on BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy data.
This higher level of energy consumption meant that the economy readjusted in a way that added more goods and services using energy. For example, the economy added paved roads, airports, schools, electricity generating capacity and healthcare. People came to expect this higher standard of living going forward, even if the level of subsidy that oil exports had been adding was rapidly disappearing.
The way the amounts in Figure 1 “work” is that they depend both on the quantity of oil exported and the market price for that oil. If Venezuela’s oil exports are not rising quickly enough, or if the price of oil is not high enough, the level of oil subsidy fails to rise enough to support the economy. Also, rising population becomes an issue because as population rises, more homes, cars, electricity, streets, and other goods (requiring energy consumption) are needed. Because Venezuela must import practically everything other than oil, it must either (a) export an increasing quantity of oil per year, or (b) get an increasingly high price for the oil it exports, if it wishes to support its rising population at its chosen standard of living.
It became evident very early that Venezuela had set its sights on a living standard that was far higher than it could really support. In the period since 1965, Venezuela’s first debt crisis took place in 1982, as the subsidy suddenly started falling. Later debt crises occurred in 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2004, and 2017. Clearly, as soon as the per capita subsidy started falling in 1982 (see Figure 1), Venezuela’s economy became very troubled. It could not really support its chosen standard of living.
How could Venezuela hide the problem of an unsupportable living standard for over 35 years?
I see three major ways the insupportable living standard could be hidden:
(a) Pushing the problem off into the future using added debt
Nearly everyone is willing to believe that oil prices will rise as high as is needed to extract oil resources that seem to be available with current technology. Would-be lenders are also willing to believe that oil resources can be extracted as rapidly as needed to support the economy. Given this combination of beliefs, Venezuela has had little difficulty adding more debt, even in periods not long after it has been forced to restructure previous debt.
Recently, the biggest lender to Venezuela has been China. With this arrangement, Venezuela has been able to obtain the economic benefit of part of its oil resources, before the oil has actually been extracted. Unfortunately, this arrangement makes Venezuela more quickly susceptible to the adverse impact of a downturn in oil prices. To make matters worse, the debt to China appears to include a provision that creates a lower repayment level (in oil) if prices rise, but creates a higher repayment level (in oil) if oil prices fall. This provision no doubt looked favorable to Venezuela, back in the time period when it was believed that oil prices could only rise.
As far as I know, Venezuela is the only oil exporting country that has used debt as extensively as it has. Some oil exporters, such as Saudi Arabia, have taken the opposite approach, setting aside reserve funds to use in the event that oil prices fall. Needless to say, Venezuela’s use of debt has tended to make its economy very vulnerable to restructuring or defaults if oil prices fall.
(b) Pursuing economic simplification
A complex economy is one that is set up, as much as possible, to keep up with growing technology. A significant share of expenditures go both toward making new capital goods and maintaining existing capital goods. There are considerable differences in pay levels, to make certain that those who are providing technical expertise are adequately compensated for their efforts. Business leaders also are adequately compensated for their contributions.
A much simpler economy, which is what most of the Venezuelan leaders have been aiming for, is an economy in which everyone gets a basic level of housing, transportation, and healthcare, but virtually no one gets very much. There is also not much investment in new technology and new capital goods because nearly all of the hard currency being obtained by selling oil exports is being used to purchase imported goods and services to support the basic level of goods and services (such as roads, electricity, education, and food) being provided to the many citizens of the economy. Since the external value of oil exports sets an upper limit on the quantity of goods and services that Venezuela can import, this leaves virtually no capacity to purchase imported goods and services needed to support new capital investment and research.
In Venezuela’s economy, the cost of both oil and electricity have been kept very low–below the cost of production. This helps keep citizens happy, but it also cuts off funds for new investment in these areas. This, too, is part of the simple economy approach.
One disadvantage of a simple economy is that the low wages for engineers and other professionals encourage these professionals to move to other countries, where compensation is more adequate. Another disadvantage of a simple economy is that it encourages bribery, because graft is a way of adjusting the system so that those who “can make things happen” are adequately compensated for their efforts. The simple economy approach also tends to discourage research and investment in new areas, such as natural gas production and improved methods of heavy oil extraction.
A simple economy can be kept operating for a while, but it quickly reaches limits in many ways:
- The limited skill level of residents who have not emigrated for higher wages elsewhere makes the completion of complex projects, such as new electricity generation facilities, difficult.
- The inadequate level of oil export revenue puts a limit on the amount of spare parts and other goods needed to maintain the infrastructure, such as electricity transmission.
- As existing oil wells deplete, little funding (in hard currency needed for imports) is available to make investments in new wells for extraction.
- Research on new techniques for oil extraction is also inhibited.
(c) Neglect of current systems becomes an increasing issue, as the lack of hard currency revenue from oil exports becomes a bigger issue.
Venezuela can, in theory, buy what it needs from abroad, but there is a limit to the total amount of goods and services that can be imported, based on the amount of hard currency funds it obtains from selling crude oil. If the price of oil falls, then Venezuela must, in some way, cut back on goods and services that it had previously supplied. One of the least obvious way of doing this is by cutting back on maintenance and repairs.
The recent long electricity outage in Venezuela seems to be at least partially related to neglect of usual maintenance activities. It seems that Venezuela’s state-owned electrical company failed to keep the brush cleared under electric transmission lines leading away from the very major Guri Dam. It now appears that one of the causes of Venezuela’s recent long electricity outage was damage to transmission lines caused by a brush fire within the Guri complex. This could perhaps have been prevented by better maintenance.
Figure 2 shows that energy consumption per capita has been falling, especially since 2011. This would suggest that standards of living have been falling. Needless to say, if Venezuela’s oil exports drop further, a further reduction in standard of living can be expected.
Why Is America Issuing Sanctions Against Venezuela’s Oil Company PDVSA?
On January 28, 2019, the United States imposed sanctions against Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA. The reasons given for these sanctions are the following:
- To hold accountable those responsible for Venezuela’s tragic decline in oil supply
- To restore democracy
- To help prevent further diverting of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro, and thereby preserve those assets for the people of Venezuela
These reasons sound good, but I expect that the primary real reason for the sanctions was to try to take Venezuela’s oil production offline and, through this action, force oil prices higher.
World oil prices have been far too low for oil producers since at least 2014.
Figure 3. Historical inflation-adjusted oil prices, based on inflation adjusted Brent-equivalent oil prices shown in BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Many people, thinking about the oil price situation from the consumers’ point of view, are completely unaware of the problem that low oil prices can cause for producers. Oil producers may not go out of business immediately because of low oil prices, but eventually the low prices will cause a cutback in investment, and thus production. Countries that have sold some of their oil production in advance, such as Venezuela, are especially vulnerable.
Figure 4. Venezuela’s energy production by type, based on data of BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Figure 4 shows that oil production for Venezuela has been dropping for a very long time. Its highest year of production was 1970, the same early high year as for the United States’ oil extraction. Natural gas is mostly “associated” gas, which is made available through oil production. Hydroelectric is small in comparison to oil and gas. Hydroelectric production has been generally falling since 2008.
There is a widespread belief among oil executives and politicians that reducing oil production will force oil prices up. I expect to see, at most, a brief spike in oil prices. The major issue is that the world economy is a networked system. Prices for oil and for electricity cannot rise higher than consumers, in the aggregate, can afford. If there is too much wage disparity around the world, the low wages of many workers will tend to hold oil prices down, because these workers cannot afford goods such as smartphones and automobiles made with oil and other energy products. These lower oil prices reflect the fact that the economy has been changing in ways that leave less surplus energy to distribute to oil exporters to operate their economies.
The way the networked economy works is determined by the laws of physics, whether we like it or not. As far as I can see, the end of oil extraction comes because oil prices cannot be raised high enough to make extraction profitable. Once oil extraction becomes unprofitable, oil exporting nations will start collapsing. Venezuela is the “canary in the coal mine” in this collapse process, because of the extensive use it has made of debt.
What If Oil Prices Can Be Forced Upward?
If somehow oil prices could be forced up by reducing Venezuela’s exports to practically zero, this would have a double benefit:
- More oil from around the world, including the United States, could be profitably extracted, because oil resources that are more expensive to produce would suddenly become profitable.
- Venezuela’s oil could be more profitably extracted.
If prices actually rise, and if the United States remains in control of the situation, the US could theoretically expand Venezuela’s oil production. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. Its expected cost of production is relatively low, if the exports of oil are not expected to support essentially the whole economy. The cost of pulling the oil out of the ground in Venezuela seems to be about $28 per barrel, if we believe a 2016 estimate by Rystad Energy.
Figure 5. Cost of producing a barrel of oil and gas in 2016. WSJ figure based on Rystead Energy analysis.
The cost of supporting the entire economy with the revenue from oil exports is far higher. Figure 6 shows that back in 2013-2014, the cost of oil, including the subsidies needed to maintain the operation of the rest of the economy, amounted to about $110 per barrel. I would expect that with all of Venezuela’s debt, the real cost might be even higher than this.
Figure 6. Estimate of OPEC break-even oil prices, including tax requirements by parent countries, from Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation.
If the US doesn’t plan to support all of Venezuela’s population with the export revenues from oil extraction, it can theoretically extract the oil more economically than the $110 per barrel price that is needed to support the whole economy. Thus, it could get along with a price closer to $28 per barrel.
Furthermore, the investment capabilities and technical expertise of the United States could, at least in theory, ramp up Venezuela’s oil production, if this is desired at some future date. Similarly, “non-associated” natural gas production could be ramped up, if desired, because this seems to be available, but has been neglected.
I expect that all of this development would be more difficult and expensive than a simple comparison such as this seems to suggest. The ultimate problem is that a whole economy needs to be in place to make the extraction possible. Even if a cursory examination suggests that substantial savings are possible, the cost associated with maintaining necessary support services would make the total cost of energy extraction much higher.
Conclusion
Venezuela seems to be the canary in the coal mine with respect to where oil exporters are headed. Other countries will want to push them out of oil production, so as to try to raise prices for themselves. Debt defaults and lack of availability of debt may also become issues.
One item of interest is the fact that in Venezuela, lack of oil revenues can adversely affect electricity supply. Thus, we should not be surprised if electricity supply fails at about the same time that oil production falls. Even electricity supply provided by hydroelectric plants seems to be at risk.
Another item of interest is how Venezuela’s attempt at even distribution of goods and services, using a somewhat socialistic approach, is working out. This approach (which is now being advocated by some political candidates) seems to have some short-term benefits, because it tends to keep the population happy–almost everyone seems to have a minimum standard of living. But, over the long term, this approach leads to the loss of the ability to maintain today’s high-tech economy. This approach doesn’t prevent collapse either, because a lack of investment and expertise eventually causes important parts of the system to stop operating.
Pingback: April 3, 2019 – Aporia Cafe
We DESERVE to FAIL…
The insanity of global trade
March 30, 2019
“The way trade works in the global economy is often absurd. Food routinely gets shipped halfway across the world to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Mexican calves — fed imported American corn — are exported to the United States to be butchered, and then the meat is exported back to Mexico for sale. More than half of the seafood caught in Alaska gets processed in China, and much of it is sent right back to American grocery store shelves.
Compounding the insanity of this “re-importation” is the equally head-scratching phenomenon of “redundant trade”. This is a common practice whereby countries both import and export identical quantities of identical products in a given year. For instance, in 2007, Britain imported 15,000 tons of chocolate-covered waffles, while exporting 14,000 tons. In 2017, the US both imported and exported nearly 1.5 million tons of beef and nearly half a million tons of potatoes.
On the face of it, this kind of trade makes no economic sense. Why would it be worth the immense cost — in money as well as fuel — of sending perfectly good food abroad only to bring it right back again?
The answer lies in the way the global economy is structured. Direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels, on the order of $5 trillion per year worldwide, allow the costs of shipping to be largely borne by taxpayers and the environment instead of the businesses that actually engage in it. This allows transnational corporations to take advantage of differences in labor and environmental laws between countries, not to mention tax loopholes, in service of making a bigger profit.
The consequences of this bad behavior are already severe, and set to become worse in the coming decades. Small farmers, particularly in the Global South, have seen their livelihoods undermined by influxes of cheap food from abroad. Trade agreements have made it impossible for companies to compete in the global economy unless they base their operations in places with the weakest protections for workers and the environment. And all the while, the share of global carbon emissions produced by commercial shipping is set to rise to 17 percent by 2050, if action isn’t taken to curb our addiction to trade. But policymakers currently have little incentive to reduce unnecessary trade: bizarrely, emissions from global trade do not appear in any nation’s carbon accounting.
The action will therefore have to begin with peoples’ movements around the world. We must call for an end to subsidies that only benefit giant corporations, as well as an end to tax policies that encourage things like re-importation and redundant trade. Perhaps the most critical step towards sanity would be the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels. Without governments covering the cost of their emissions, transnational corporations would have to radically reconsider the way they operate.
Making these changes will not be easy. Generating momentum for trade policies that promote community health, small farmers, and ecological stability will not happen overnight. But the first step is raising awareness of trade as an issue, and overcoming the unwillingness of most major media outlets, politicians and think-tanks to discuss it critically.”
https://roarmag.org/2019/03/30/local-futures-insane-trade-week/
Thanks to the Automatic Earth…Debt Rattle for bringing it to my attention
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2019/03/debt-rattle-march-31-2019/
Oh…from the article..”Changes won’t be easy”…agreed, it’s called collapse.
If the cost of transport goes up, because of mandated changes to reduce air pollution, a person can imagine what happens. The economy, in a sense, becomes less efficient. The wages of individual workers do not rise. They cannot afford to pay more for food or other goods shipped and reshipped around the world. Instead, profit margins shrink, and the gap between “what it costs to produce food” and “the amount people are able to pay for food” becomes less favorable to producers. A similar problem happens for oil, and for those operating ships transporting goods around the world. The economy eventually collapses from low profit margins.
Still doesn’t explain the article ….
“The way trade works in the global economy is often absurd. Food routinely gets shipped halfway across the world to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Mexican calves — fed imported American corn — are exported to the United States to be butchered, and then the meat is exported back to Mexico for sale. More than half of the seafood caught in Alaska gets processed in China, and much of it is sent right back to American grocery store shelves.”
NAFTA allowed cheap subsidized corn grown in the United States to be exported to Mexico,. Thus, displacing there self sufficient small landholders and allowing agribiz to consolidate landholdings and create mega complexes. These displaced Mexican families had no choice but to vote with their feet to the United States to probably go to a place for employment. Perhaps working a a meat processing plant to butcher those cattle from the Mexican mega complexes at poverty wages, since the union was busted decades ago.
Suppose we can justify just about anything with petroleum doing the work for us!
From the above
.” In 2017, the US both imported and exported nearly 1.5 million tons of beef and nearly half a million tons of potatoes.
On the face of it, this kind of trade makes no economic sense. Why would it be worth the immense cost — in money as well as fuel — of sending perfectly good food abroad only to bring it right back again”
But it makes us a profit!
You have to keep in mind the volume of what is being processed and shipped. It wouldn’t pencil out in low volume, but evidently does at very high volumes. The energy used is only a component in the equation to determine highest profitability. They aren’t thinking in terms of long term most energy efficient method to extend BAU, only what works in the moment. Where are labor costs lowest? Where does this stuff need to be refined? Is that the fastest way to get it done? Is it still profitable and if so how much? Those are the questions asked by business.
I agree. The issue is lowest cost. This often means trying to avoid high cost labor, either with lower cost labor elsewhere, or by substituting fossil fuels for labor costs. No one claims this approach is sustainable. It depends on just in time deliveries, among other things.
I can’t disagree Gail with your logic – what fails me is that others, who must clearly be very bright, are unable to recognise this idiocy. It is true that the scriptures do say that this will be the case, but nevertheless it does seem to be incredible.
BTW I would also like to record my great appreciation of you hosting this most important blog which in my view offers the best in economic and energy related posts that I have yet found.
This is a stunning post ST and I am eternally grateful and would crave your permission to reproduce your comments in my 3rd edition book, with acknowledgement of course, for which I would need your contact name. Please email me at: peter@underco.co.uk if you are desirous of complying. I have copied anyway, awaiting your approval.
I have a Chapter – National Economies, which would benefit from your additons because I missed your important point of re-shipments being subsidised, of this I was unaware. I believed that return trips (being empty) would be filled at a minimum cost, like road transport.
And thanks for the links, I had seen debt rattle but speed read it and probably missed some important points.
“The inability of UK politicians to agree how to leave the European Union has plunged Brexit into chaos and helped paralyze the British economy. A weak housing market, slumping autos production, declining investment and downbeat executives all suggest that nearly three years of uncertainty over Brexit is causing the economy to stagnate. The latest warning sign came Tuesday, when the British Chambers of Commerce said a survey of 7,000 businesses indicates that economic growth “nearly ground to a halt” in the first quarter.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/02/economy/uk-economy-brexit/index.html
“The Bundesbanker urged companies that rely on banking services to switch contracts with U.K. counterparties to entities based in the EU so that they can keep running. Failing to modify the contracts would mean banks aren’t able to provide loans and services as agreed.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-02/brexit-may-bring-new-threat-for-battered-german-investment-banks
This reminds me of the Y 2000 problem, back 19 years ago. No one knew what the effect of the roll-over from 1999 to 2000 would be on computer programs. Would it cause programs to freeze up everywhere?
Funnily enough, I’ve often seen the non-event that was Y2K used to discredit any notion that the systems we have created might spiral irrevocably beyond our control.
Likewise our efforts to rein in our use of ozone-depleting CFC gases are sometimes given as an example of our collective ability to make wise choices that factor in our best long-term interests.
IMO it would have done anyway, blaming Brexit is like blaming the burning house on smoking too heavily. The UK economy has been in trouble for some time,covered up by the BoE printing money to cover. I ask, if things are so good, why are interest rates on the floor still, after 10 years?
“The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the majority of countries around the world can expect slower growth in 2019 as the global economy loses momentum. Christine Lagarde said rising trade tensions, concerns over Brexit and tougher financial conditions as central banks raised interest rates had “increasingly unsettled” the world economy over recent months.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/02/imf-chief-warns-of-slower-growth-for-most-countries-christine-lagarde
“The World Trade Organization has warned that global trade will face “strong headwinds” over the next two years …the WTO did not just blame new tariffs and retaliatory responses for the slowdown in trade growth. It also cited “weaker global economic growth, volatility in financial markets and and tighter monetary conditions in developed countries” as factors.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9cba9d4c-5533-11e9-91f9-b6515a54c5b1
“Bernanke didn’t see 2006 flat curve as sign of impending slump [but] ‘Mini-inversions’ like last week’s can precede longer episodes.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-02/this-time-is-different-for-yield-curve-they-said-that-last-time
No kidding! Look at the track record. The gray bars are recessions. Pretty much every inversion seems to have led to a recession.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/3-month-and-10-year-interest-rates-through-march-27-2019.png
They can but will they? The only real test is an inversion in the 3mth – 10 year and we are not at that yet – it could easily revert back:
https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/yieldcurve.php
This could be a storm in a teacup and brokers talikng their book?
How about, “Energy consumption world-wide that is not growing rapidly enough” being the underlying problem. The more energy being consumed for shipping, the less that is available for local use.
“Of all the reasons given for the slowdown in the global economy, it seems that the world’s ballooning debt load has fallen to near the bottom of the list for some reason. Perhaps it’s because interest rates haven’t shot higher as many expected, but large amounts of debt have other negative implications that may now be coming to light.
“In 2012, Carmen Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff wrote in a paper published on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s website that economies with high debt potentially face “massive” losses of output lasting more than a decade, even if interest rates remain low. Could that be happening now?
“A U.S. Commerce Department report showed on Tuesday that the three-month annualized rate of change in new orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — a series that provides insight into capital spending without undue volatility from aircraft orders — declined for the fourth consecutive month. At the same time, the Institute of International Finance issued a report saying that the mountain of global debt expanded by $3.3 trillion last year to $243 trillion, or more than three times worldwide gross domestic product.
“Total debt in the U.S. grew by $2.9 trillion to more than $68 trillion in the largest annual increase since 2007. What’s truly disturbing is that the IIF said U.S. nonfinancial corporate debt stands at 73 percent of GDP, close to its pre-crisis peak. That helps explain why the first quarter ushered in the most credit ratings downgrades for U.S. companies relative to upgrades since the beginning of 2016, according to S&P Global Ratings data compiled by Bloomberg.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-02/-3-3-trillion-of-global-debt-starts-to-tip-the-scale
“Global debt growth decelerated sharply in 2018, with about $3.3 trillion added globally compared with an increase of $21 trillion the previous year, the Institute of International Finance said in a report on Tuesday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-economy-debt/global-debt-edged-up-in-2018-debt-ratio-little-changed-iif-idUKKCN1RE1MH
“Debt repayments by the world’s poorest countries have doubled since 2010 to reach their highest level since just before the internationally organised write-off in 2005, campaigners have warned. The Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) said a borrowing spree when global interest rates were low had left many developing nations facing repayments bills that were forcing them into public spending cuts.
“Plunging commodity prices, a stronger dollar and rising US interest rates had combined to increase debt repayments by 85% between 2010 and 2018, the JDC said.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/03/debt-crisis-warning-as-poorest-countries-repayment-bills-soar
With higher debt repayment, these countries need to cut back on other purchases, pushing the global economy toward contraction.
Ouch! The world economy desperately needs rapidly growing debt to keep the system operating.
This will always be the case, Gail, in a fiat-based economy because they create money out of nothing for the debt, but not the interest. So in order to service the interest they need to continually create more debt. It is a constant spiral of ponzi finance.
Take a 30 year mortgage: Capital cost $100,000. £80,000 mortgage at 6% pa compounding. Rule of 72 = debt doubles in 12 years, therefore, without payments the total debt equals £300,000. With a 30 year repayment plan the interest is in fact about $100,000 in total. So the bankers (rent-seekers) have ‘earned’ a 100% return on capital. Not bad if you are in the club!
My book explains all this and more.
Comparing the $2.9 trillion reported debt growth in the US, compared to the $3.3 trillion added globally (Reuters’ article), this leaves only $0.4 trillion debt growth in the rest of the world. No wonder the US economy seems to be doing better than the rest of the world! No wonder the rest of the world economy seems to be doing poorly!
We really need debt that is productive. But increasingly, the debt that is being added really has no long-term added value to the economy, so it isn’t beneficial. It just cuts back spending as it needs to repaid with interest.
Harry, many thanks for this. There is a school of thought that deficits don’t matter, nor debt either, if you own the global reserve currency. It’s a bit like paying for goods you consume with undated cheques which are never presented (bonds) – so you can go on until your creditors decide to start chasing the cheques – when that happens the house of cards collapses. Check out my friend Gerry at: http://boomfinanceandeconomics.com/#/
Furthermore, we are only talking paper here, so as long as paper is produced the underlying energy requirement may be ignored until its effects are impossible to avoid – we are not there yet, but IMHO, we are close. This will be realised by the destruction of the dollar. The Fed is preparing for more QE but in a slightly different form this time. Zero Hedge has good links and Peter Shiff has reported recently and this site is good for energy limits: http://energyskeptic.com/2019/richard-heinberg-our-bonus-decade/
Forgive me if I am teaching mother to suck eggs! Your posts are a joy and I follow you avidly.
It’s all about Ghawar……….
“When Saudi Aramco on Monday published its first ever profit figures since its nationalization nearly 40 years ago, it also lifted the veil of secrecy around its mega oil fields. The company’s bond prospectus revealed that Ghawar is able to pump a maximum of 3.8 million barrels a day — well below the more than 5 million that had become conventional wisdom in the market.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-02/saudi-aramco-reveals-sharp-output-drop-at-super-giant-oil-field
I noticed that article. Shows us how little we know about Saudi Arabia’s oil today. I expect the oil price means a great deal to Saudi Arabia, since they use the taxes on Saudi Aramco to power the rest of the economy to a significant extent.
The article also points out that SA has in excess of 220 billion barrels of conventional oil left which is still worth 52 yrs at the current 12 million b/d depletion rate.
These amounts only make sense if oil prices don’t fall too low for Saudi Arabia to keep its economy operating. Another adverse scenario would occur if annual exports fall too low to keep the economy operating. Another adverse scenario is that current leadership is overthrown by unhappy citizens.
I think Peak Oilers historically have put way too much faith in numbers such as these. They are only relevant, to extent that the economy “sticks together.”
BRAZIL OIL OUTPUT -4.9% YOY IN FEB., TO 3,182M BARRELS/DAY
Thanks! Brazil could use higher prices, I expect.
“The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index, which tracks rates for ships ferrying dry bulk commodities, fell on Friday, marking its biggest quarterly decline in three years as the capesize index slumped to a record low on weak demand from top miners Brazil and Australia.”
https://www.drycargomag.com/baltic-index-marks-worst-quarter-in-3-years-as-capesizes-drop-to-record-low
I see the Vale dam break affected Brazil and Australia had a weather-related disturbance. But the index is still way down.
Hi Harry, Many thanks for all your efforts.
BDI is a good forward indicator but can be misleading. My friend at BOOM says have a look at this: http://www.harperpetersen.com/harpex/harpexVP.do
Now this tracks containers and is growing upward, so we have a conflict here? Perhaps with your investigative skills you will have time to research and find an answer?
With best wishes
Peter, I’m not familiar with the Harper Petersen index. I’ll keep an eye out for any information that might enlighten us as to the discrepancy.
I quite like the BDI because it can’t be manipulated by governments in the same way as GDP and employment figures, for example, and so the trend-line gives a reasonable insight into the health of international trade, even taking into account the overcapacity issues that have dogged the shipping industry.
You can see it hit its recent nadir in early 2016 when oil prices also hit their nadir; the Chinese stock market was crashing and the global economy was in real danger of seizing up before the central banks went on their borrowing splurge, the effects of which seem to be wearing off now.
All agreed Harry, and I too follow the BDI daily but my friend Gerry says the Harpers Index is more current being container etc finished goods shipments.
“Americans are finally tapping the brakes when it comes to buying new vehicles… Depending on the final numbers reported by automakers later this week, the pace of sales during the first quarter could be lowest since the fourth quarter of 2014.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/auto-sales-slow-to-lowest-level-in-four-years-despite-truck-demand.html
“U.S. retail sales unexpectedly eased in February on declines in grocery stores and building materials, which could potentially reflect cooler weather, though also may signal further headwinds for the economy in the first quarter.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-01/u-s-retail-sales-unexpectedly-fall-prior-reading-revised-up
I am afraid we are starting to get beyond the impact of the tax cut stimulus.
“U.S. retail sales unexpectedly eased in February…”
I expected this…
“Manhattan real estate had its worst first quarter since the financial crisis, capping the longest losing streak for sales in over 30 years, according to a new report.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/manhattan-real-estate-sales-fall-for-sixth-straight-quarter.html
I see the story ends with a feel-good ending, as usual:
“Dozens of cities in China are spending big on construction projects, despite having shrinking populations, a South China Morning Post analysis has found. On paper, these debt-fuelled projects are major contributors to economic growth, but in reality, they do not bring real productivity, raising further questions about the efficiency and foresight of China’s urban planning.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3004152/growing-pains-chinas-shrinking-cities-are-addicted-building
“The global economy is “highly likely” to fall into a recession if the U.S. and China don’t reach a trade deal within three months, according to Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. His prediction was based on current “extraordinarily fragile” business sentiment that was a result of a protracted tariff fight between the two largest economies in the world that started last year.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/mark-zandi-on-recession-risks-from-us-china-trade-deal-hard-brexit.html
“With the growth rate in the US economy slowing as the impact of the Trump tax cuts wears off, the global economy needs China to achieve something close to the upper end of its targeted range of 6 per cent to 6.5 per cent GDP growth to help stave off the threat of a global recession.
“More than a decade after the financial crisis, the key governments and their central banks lack monetary and fiscal policy firepower and flexibility to respond meaningfully to any material synchronised global slowdown. This week’s trade talks in Washington could be critical, and not just for China.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/global-economy-remains-fragile-and-vulnerable-despite-chinese-surprise-20190402-p519wz.html
a manufactured dwelling (as opposed to a cave) represents energy input and growth until the day it is completed.
the incoming occupants represent energy input, wages, heat, light food, maintenance and so on
this input maintains the dwelling at an optimum level
if there are no occupants, then the dwelling starts to deteriorate from the moment it’s completed
Then bits start falling off, slow at first, then accelerating until trees grow through the roof eventually
I’m always amazed that no one has pointed out this basic law of nature to the Chinese—unless there’s some grand plan I don’t know about,
Entropy only goes in one direction.
In a closed system.
Luckily, for the foreseeable future, we are in an open system, with about a thousand watts per square metre of energy, readily harvested by plants.
This is unlike the seemingly “open” system of digging ancient fossil sunlight out of the ground, which we all treated like an open system for some 200 years or so.
I have seen the future, and it is powered by photosynthesis.
Well said Jan, you have seen the future and it is true.
It is currently powered by photosynthesis.
And luck we are in an open system.
“I have seen the future, and it is powered by photosynthesis.”
that will translate to a cull of the present human population by about 6-7 billion. that big of a cull would likely translate to total extinction of modern humans. maybe a few highland tribes in Papua New Guinea or Irian Java, those living in near total isolation, might make it.
Well, I guess it depends on your definition of “modern humans.”
If you’re talking about people with their eyes glued to smart phones, then I agree, and say, “Good riddance!”
But Homo sapiens has been through closer brushes with extinction. Just 70,000 years ago, there is evidence that humans were reduced to less than 1,000 breeding pairs.
those humans were tough hunter-gatherers. moderns are not so. if you are among those who are, you might make it. tropics to subtropics will be the survival areas, like before. so if you’re not socially connected with those eating yams and hunting wild pigs, you’re probably not going to make it. sounds dire, just sayin.
see J. Diamond, “Guns, Germs & Steel”, and his book “Collapse”.
I read those books many years ago and they are instructive. But the Innuit manage to survive well in the northern climes so it isn’t necessary to be in the tropics – but it does help. For me, staying warm is crucial to my wellbeing – I can’t stand the cold and suffer Raynaud’s syndrome to boot.
So my 10 years in Cape Town were a boon for me, but having to return to UK once again causes SAD in winter and is miserable for 8 months of dark, damp, grey, cold environment which is not conducive to a happy life style. I have always disliked being in UK even as a child; so I am retired here under sufferance.
True. But I don’t think things are quite as dire as you think for those with even some subsistence skills.
With global warming kicking in, I disagree about the tropics being the best place. Much of that area (and the sub-tropics, and the near-tropics) may become uninhabitable. Australia and India are reaching 50°C! Humans die without air conditioning in such circumstances.
While I think he has a lot of valuable things to say, I would not trust Jared Diamond for prognostication. In Collapse, his example of a modern failed civilization was… Montana! Where you can still go into an air-conditioned Mall•Wart and come out with lots of cheap calories!
Wherever you are, get started. Grow food. Join a garden club. Talk to others who grow food. The ones who will “make it” will be those who can feed themselves and each other.
This is so true Jan, but most people do not want to know and certainly don’t want to put the hard work into finding out about subsistence and actually working it. I spent 20 years on my small holding and learned many lessons – the most important thing was my own and my family’s health, knowledge and energy whilst tilling the land and nurturing the animals.
We had many set-backs, natural, weather and otherwise. It is a hard way to live but it is how we have lived for most of our existence. The washing machine is the most labour-saving device that ever was conceived, my mother would have died for it – mangle in hand!
My daughter is just starting with bees and is worried about the round-up she has used – I said forget it – it’s poison and go natural. It is so important to educate our young ones to understand that this crazy world is coming to an end and only those with the skills and knowledge will be able to survive (and be happy and content). I expect 80% of city dwellers to die off in short order.
PS
My friend Niall (a well financed person) has seven acres and a potable spring and I have agreed to work with him after the crisis to help him work the land and stock – he lives but 30 mins horse ride away. So I am staying here, in rural Somerset, and the rest of the UK can go whistle.
Peter
Have you read Chris Smaje over on Resilience?
He lives in your neck of the woods
I keep advising him to build a wall between Bath and Bournemouth but I dont think he takes me seriously
(Link provided.)
Chris has a lot of great ideas, but is somewhat academic, and he doesn’t really see a place for collective ownership and collaborative agriculture. I don’t know him well, but I suspect he is younger than a number of us who see the need to keep a bunch of young ‘uns around for the physical labour that gets more difficult every year.
He has a book coming out soon from Chelsea Green.
my comments keep disappearing–this is just a test
Got it Norman. Why not try my email if you want a personal exchange? peter@underco.co.uk
thanks Peter
I already have your email for anything important—that was just a comment about Chris Smaje
don’t know why it refused to go through—it wasn’t desperately important
I don’t either. I let it through when I found the comment “trapped.”
OK no worries Norman, thanks
Peter
Have you read Chris Smaje over on Resilience? He lives in your neck of the woods I keep advising him to build a wall between Bath and Bournemouth but I dont think he takes me seriously
Yes, Norman, I have read Resilience but i didn’t know that he lives near us – great news, I will follow up. Thanks for the heads-up
The tropics & subtropics may be OK for those who have lived there for generations but for those who are pale skinned & who haven’t lived there, it’s a death trap!
Tropical DISEASES has turned the tropics into the “white mans grave”, if you want to survive there, head for the hills!
Not only will it be cooler but you can get above most of those infective diseases carried by mosquitos & flies & stay OUT of the WATER unless your wearing waders, there are paracites that can infect you in there as well & before you drink any water, BOIL IT WELL.
All meat & fish will need to be WELL COOKED, paracites live in there too, no more sushi!
One of the reasons northerners did so much better than people who lived in the tropics was that they escaped most of the diseases that had evolved with humans in Africa.
But even there, you cannot escape from becoming “long pig”, stay alert!
Excellent advice Sheila, thank you. I lived for 10 years in Cape Town and learned as I went, what with security, dangerous snakes and scorpions in the bed etc. My South African wife was invaluable in guiding me to be OBSERVANT! Something to which I am not naturally attracted to.
When at the ATM – look around, notice indigenous people on their cell phones, non-local cars nearby or a passing bakki loaded with you know what. All lots of fun and I survived but only with my wife, without her, I would have failed and left in dismay I am sure.
IMO it is best to be in an environment which you know well, like here in UK, even if it has awful weather and is grey, dark, damp, cold and wet for 8 months of the year. At least the crops grow well in the long days of summer and the grass is as green as landlubber at sea! ( I am a yacthsman of 30 years experience in the Channel and 10 on the high seas).
Favorite Yogi Berra Quote: “It’s like deja vu all over again. When you come to a fork in the road, take it. It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Jan, we who are teaching Hal to read and write and reason, believe nuclear will keep us in business. Los Alamos is a very pretty place as is Oak Ridge.
Just returned from the Yucatán. Parts are an ecological disaster with unchecked development on a huge scale. Environmental laws are ignored. Corruption is rampant. But the Maya people waiti. Stoically. They have suffered societal collapse many times. The jungle will provide. They will deal with the conquistadors and gangsters (Mexican government) when the time comes. And maybe someday they will build pyramids again and keep time with the great celestial clock.
What so great about the tropics? Its back to malthus (best case), so all climate zones will be equally hard . Some will allow higher pop density.
If interest rates fall, then the monthly payment for a new buyer to buy the home will fall. This will allow the price of the home to rise. Capital appreciation! This is the real reason many people buy a home. Also, interest payments have been tax deductible on US income taxes. (But the new tax law is now limiting these to interest payments on a mortgage amount to $750,000. This primarily affects states with high home values.)
If inflation can be built into the equation as well, this makes it easy to “sell” a home as a good investment, regardless of the depreciation/entropy problem. China does not have real estate taxes, so this is not an issue.
Gail,
The only way I have ever seen a home work as an investment is if it were a multifamily, living in one apartment and renting out the remainder. Owing a home is very expensive in terms of maintenance, appreciation helps but transaction costs are horrendous and hidden so the seller/buyer does not see them(I have a RE broker’s license). My home is up 33 percent in three years, but I purchased wisely, it needed a great deal of work and I am able to do same. Subtract out the construction costs which are materials only and the gain is 15% but upon sale 6% of the gross sales will be RE commissions, unless one is a broker then 3% assuming only one side of sale.
In MN the rules for landlords are different for duplexs, fourplexes and then more than four units becomes a challenge. The cost of continuing education to keep up with the rules is not a trivial expense.
Forget a homestead where one runs both a waste and potable water plant and a nail when needed is ten miles away.
One other option is a home based business, a number of small machine shops are starting in garages, modern, small footprint CNC machines have made this a viable option. The goal is to find a niche where the value added by the labor is greater than can be done after tax with capital. It works until the idea that a $60K pickup is deductible and then the payments gotchya.
Dennis L.
At one time, years ago, appreciation did work for quite a few homeowners. But now, inflation is not high enough, especially if oil prices start heading back down again.
Glad you’re talking about shelter. The analysis helps us see how complex and elaborate is the chain of inputs and costs in shelter. My home expenses keep rising beyond the cost-of-living increase to our fixed incomes. Then you have the money grubbers trying to grow complexity so they can profit. Putting all sorts of maintenance costs on the village. No plans for incremental repairs, water catchment, or to care from those of us close to the edge–and our home situation is not the worst!
I too share your situation Artleads. On fixed income pensions we are at the behest of the power companies, council tax, car insurance and not to mention repairs which I have just got a bill for and couldn’t believe it – uh – such is the destiny of us OAPs
And I am a retired accountant and budget carefully, and even I become overwhelmed!
Thank you for sharing, I see the same things as you.
Dennis L.
1/ Chinese want to enter the same/similar level of affluence as achieved in other IC countries
2/ Chinese live in high rise structures as opposed to US plywood dwellings per each family, hence Chinese hope for slower entropy attack curve for their situation..
Obviously, in the very long term it doesn’t matter.
This is a link to a July 2018 movie showing someone looking at a speculative set of condos built in China three years ago that was already falling apart. It wasn’t the concrete part that was failing; it was the tiles used for trim. Balconies were falling off.
click on the video at 4:10 and they show the façade of a building sheering off just from gravity. What was a surprise to me is they said ghost cities are still being built. Huh? Is this similar to one of those Roosevelt type work programs during the depression just to employ people? The difference is the Works Progress Administration under FDR built things to last. The Chinese are building apparently without any intention of people living in them because obviously they are not building them to last. It’s really sick even if it does employ people in the short term. It won’t be long before they employ them to tear them down.
Historically, wealthy people in China have put their savings in real estate. Until fairly recently, there wasn’t a stock market to invest in. The purpose of these ghost cities is to give people something to invest in, for the future. There hasn’t been real estate taxes. Historically, there has been quite a bit inflation in apartment house prices, so the goal of all of this investment in inflation in home values. In theory, as the economy continues to grow, more people will move from low rise homes without electricity and indoor plumbing in the country to high rises in the city. This growing urban population will allow these buildings to be occupied. With China’s and the world’s energy growth problems, I would not really count on this continued population growth in the cities.
Yes, I know about it, now given the scale of construction there, what this and similar examples mean in terms of the overall numbers, representation of less than 5%, 25%, 75% ???
The impression I get is that in recent years, builders have been cutting corners to a greater and greater extent. This may be related to China’s falling coal production. It has imported some coal from elsewhere, but it has to cut back somewhere. So there probably was little of this before 2013, but the percentage has been going up in recent years. If there was a whole lot several years ago, there would have been outrage. So I expect it is mostly a recent phenomenon, possibly limited in scope.
Ive seen a lot of his stuff
always amazed he doesnt get thrown out of china
or worse
Any links to other videos that might be worth watching?
you can pick him up on a series of youtube vids, follow the sidebars
there’s a string of them on this link
Why would I watch him? He’s just another e-celeb promoting himself
nothing is compulsory on here
you can even log on without clothes on if you want
oh… isn’t that standard behavior?
China has energy problems because it is running short of cheap-to-produce coal. Another story elsewhere talked about increasing freight transport so the other coal, in a less accessible area (west?) could be extracted. But without enough coal that can be profitably extracted, growth becomes very difficult. Wind and solar do practically nothing.
“Global trade disputes and potential for Brexit- related disruptions continue to affect manufacturing exporters. March data signaled further global declines in new export orders in the manufacturing sector, taking the current trend of declining orders to seven months and reaching the lowest level in almost three years, according to the J.P. Morgan Global Manufacturing Index.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-01/global-factory-export-orders-mired-in-seven-month-contraction
“Eurozone economies received a double dose of bad news yesterday as inflation fell further from the European Central Bank’s target and a survey showed the crucial manufacturing sector shrinking at its fastest rate in six years.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/global-trade-fears-depress-inflation-and-manufacturers-bspr9dcsb
“Slumping global demand is leaving factories with growing piles of unsold stock, threatening to force firms to cut back production and lay off workers in the months ahead.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/04/01/germany-leads-eurozone-deepening-industrial-recession/
“Brexit day may have been delayed by two weeks, but British factories are taking no chances with the risks to supply chains that would result from a messy divorce between the UK and European Union. In the latest purchasing managers’ index of the UK’s manufacturing industry, released today, data showed a massive increase in stockpiling.”
https://qz.com/1584842/uk-factories-are-stockpiling-like-crazy-ahead-of-brexit/
“By 2016, it seemed that governments and central banks were “out of ammunition,” monetary or fiscal, and economists debated whether any policies could avoid secular stagnation when interest rates were already zero and public debt levels were already high…
“Just two years after the gloomy 2016 nadir, however, the skies seemed dramatically clearer. By 2018, forecasts of global growth and inflation had risen significantly, and central banks and markets were again focused on the long anticipated “exit” from unorthodox policies. It is vital to understand what drove this sudden improvement.
“The answer is simple: Massive fiscal expansion, which in two major economies was partly or wholly financed by central bank money. The U.S. fiscal deficit rose from 3.9 percent of GDP in 2015 to 4.7 percent in 2018 and a projected 5.0 percent in 2019. China’s grew from below 1 percent in 2014 to over 4 percent and Japan’s remained around 4 percent, abandoning previous plans for a reduction to zero by 2020. And while the U.S. fiscal expansion was financed by bond sales to the private sector, in China the central bank indirectly financed large bond purchases by commercial banks, while in Japan, the entire net increase in public debt is financed by central bank purchases of government bonds. The global economy recovered because the world’s three largest economies rejected the idea that high public debt burdens made further fiscal expansion impossible.
“But the impact of that stimulus has faded… So we are back to facing the same question as in 2016: What to do if stagnation threatens when interest rates are already close to zero? …In Japan, permanent monetary finance is already occurring, even though the central bank denies it.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/04/01/commentary/world-commentary/zero-interest-rates-new-normal/#.XKMU0phKjIU
“Life isn’t getting any easier for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The central bank chief, fresh off a year of intense criticism from President Donald Trump and a sharp rebuke from financial markets, now faces a landscape full of mines that could detonate in any direction.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/things-only-getting-tougher-chair-184226902.html
Admitting that a recession may be ahead would be hard for Powell to do.
Yes indeed Gail. Peter Schiff has an observation:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-31/peter-schiff-permanent-debt-monetization-dollar-collapse-next
Investing in gold doesn’t really seem like a solution to me, either, though.
I must admit that I am a bit of a gold bug, Gail. I think that a currency that has prevailed for 5000 years, and preserved value to boot, must have something going for it. I was told (not verified) that a toga in Roman times was the same price in gold as a good, tailored suit is today.
Well, trouble is that in the New Economy, perhaps gold won’t be worth as much and certainly can’t be eaten, so there are pluses and minuses – as always.
I hadn’t realized that in 2019, US projected fiscal deficit at 5.0% will exceed that of Japan at 4%. It is borrow, borrow, borrow.
problems with VZ electricity have roots that go back many years:
https://news.yahoo.com/maduro-announces-30-days-electricity-rationing-venezuela-015233386.html
my sympathies to the people of VZ…
Venezuela: “According to preliminary internal estimates from state-owned PdV, March average crude production could be as low as 500,000 b/d, half of the February average, factoring in multiple days of shut-in output because of the collapse of the power grid.”
Electricity problem looks to be close to permanent. It affects ability to pump oil at gas stations, as well as processing oil that is extracted.
Australia swelters through the warmest March on record
https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/10889450-3×2-700×467.jpg
Not only was it the hottest March, but it has also been the hottest start to the year on record. By a lot.
When will this record-breaking heat end?
(It’s broken now, cold snap & rain on the east coast)
To answer you question, the system is a vast, gigantic dynamic system that has inertia.
Translation[ what is put in the system today does not manifest itself until later, perhaps in twenty years or so. Wait till feedbacks start to kick in….of course, I agree with Gail, with close to 8 Billion people on the planet there is not much we can do to curtail the inevitable. Just hope the system has low sensitivity and be a Lukewarmer in mindset.
Its all about the Science, as our Gail has repeatedly stated.
All our prepping efforts are all in vain, I’m afraid
The northernmost town in the world, Longyearbyen, is located in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, just 650 miles from the North Pole.
The Arctic town is home to the Global Seed Vault, often called the ” doomsday seed vault”: a structure that stores duplicate seeds of nearly every known crop on the planet.
Longyearbyen’s permafrost should ensure that these seeds remain frozen even without electricity. But that permafrost is starting to melt due to rising Arctic temperatures, putting the vault at risk.
A new report suggests that Longyearbyen may be the world’s fastest-warming town
Inger Hanssen-Bauer, the editor of the new report, told CNN that the climate in Longyearbyen is probably warming faster than in any other town on Earth. The town’s annual average temperature about 120 years ago was 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Since then, the average has gone up by almost 7 degrees Fahrenheit — nearly triple the worldwide average increase of about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius)
https://www.businessinsider.com/doomsday-seed-vault-in-danger-climate-change-2019-3
In the rear view mirror:
https://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2019/03/spring-equinox-2019-climate-chaos-and-more.html
This is new post by George Mobus. He started writing about energy issues long ago. I have met him many times. I think the feeling, “We are very close to the edge,” is being felt by many people, including George.
I have a similar feeling Gail, it is something that I can’t deny and yet Gerry at BOOM is not convinced at all, which makes me more confused than ever. My dad said always follow your feelings and they have never let me down.
Maybe there is a first time even yet, but we will see. I am so busy with Brexit etc everything else has to take second place. Thanks for sharing though – it helps me feel a bit better.
George says we are past the point of no return—
We no longer have a problem—
We have a predicament.
I believe that the longer human civilization artificially avoids the inevitable collapse via. increasing global debt, the larger, faster and more catastrophic the collapse will be (likely resulting in a nuclear war). Too bad, the collapse wasn’t allowed to occur naturally in 2008. Back then, we had more of a chance to minimize the economic destruction resulting from unfettered capitalism.
No, worrying about climate change is all in vain if you believe the use of fossil fuels is the problem.
Ahaa! I hope more people get this point! Although i would argue that FFs (like everything else in this system!) are used very foolishly.
“Translation[ what is put in the system today does not manifest itself until later, perhaps in twenty years or so. Wait till feedbacks start to kick in…”
Absolutely true super tramp. I’ve even heard the delay can take 30+ years. The reason why is it takes time for oceans to warm (thermal inertia) then influence weather. It’s really difficult to get most people to fully grasp the primary problem, let alone any notion of a delayed effect, and even more daunting realizing the weather already is getting weird, to understand it will progressively get worse even if absolute, complete collapse happened suddenly.
I keep reading in the mainstream news about ideas of being able to dump X # more billions of tons of you know what and still remain under two Cee (I’m writing in code). That doesn’t make any sense when considering the delayed effect.
Thank you Chrome Mag. Yes, we are already beyond the point of no return.
I hope it’s slow, very slow….but judging by current events…????
I envy people I cross that are unaware and only concerned by their immediate circle of job, family and friends, sports and entertainment, plus a little bit of politics and maybe a retirement. Better that way, I suppose.
Being past Sixty and looking to retire early before the SHTF and enjoy a few years perhaps.
If not, no complaints…it was a wonderful life up to now🤣!
Thank you Gail and all the past and current contributors for opening my eyes and mind to a new perspective of reality. Glad I have been here these past number of years. Not saying it’s been the total truth, but without a doubt part of the truth! Perhaps God or the Creator will reveal the missing part….after I ask, “Why didn’t you do a better job!”…
Just kidding😃
Lovely sentiment ST and I am with you entirely. I too am grateful for a happy and peaceful life of 75 years, being by chance (or by design), born in UK (even for its downsides – especially the weather). You question of why has God (using the term as you understand Him) allowed all the suffering and trouble in the world?
It was explained to me that God is a father of all his children and,, as a parent, would you stop them doing what they do, directly? No, you allow them their space, but at the same time try and educate them to their misadventures – but never intervene as this is the way to alienation. I have found this to be true in my experience of bringing up four lovely ones.
Oh and BTW. When I was seven years old, I asked my father: “What is this thing they call God?” (from school religious studies). He answered: “Go forth and study the plants and animals and all the loveliness of creation. And then, at night, go out and study the heavens and all the wonderful stars and planets. Then come back to me and ask: Am I the greatest thing in the universe.
I did this and returned to my father and said: “I am definitely not the greatest thing in the universe”. He replied: “Well then there must be something or someone greater than you – and this is what some people call God”
I have never had trouble with believing in a Higher Power ever since.
Thanks Peter for sharing your personal story. Your Father was a neat guy with great insight.
Just wait until the pollution from the last 20 years catches up to us. That will be the final blow to our bloated population, supported by a by then already moribund industrial economy.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpZi2UCXgAENIrk.jpg
He was already a rich bastard through his wife’s money.
How do the machinations of flawed individuals like Al Gore affect the science of GW?
The Arctic is still in trouble. It’s at its lowest point ever for this time of year in terms of ice coverage, and melt season is just about to start. http://bit.ly/2YJ6mr9
When there is an oil limits story to cover up, any other story that might hide the problem gets emphasized.
Well, it seems it is NOT number 1 on your list!
From Gore’s speech:
Last September 21 (2007), as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.2.
This is why I do get my Science from Al Gore, a politician, but the scientific community
The claim that Gore “predicted” an ice-free Arctic in 2014 is a simplification of these events. However, Gore is definitely guilty, in these cases, of cherry picking science or playing loose with the details of that science.
Gore’s statements gained the most viral attention in 2014 and 2015, both because these were years in which Gore’s statements implied an ice-free summer in the Arctic and because those years had relatively more arctic sea ice than preceding years.
From a broad perspective, however, summer sea ice in the Arctic has, in fact, been declining at faster rates relative to 20th century, and the year 2016 has tied with the year 2007 (the year highlighted by Gore in his Nobel speech) for the second least Arctic summer sea ice on record (the lowest recorded sea ice extent occurred in 2012).
While the disappearance of summer sea ice is difficult to predict, a 2013 review of different approaches (including Maslowski’s) summarized the range of various predictions for the first ice-free summer in the Arctic:
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
Arctic sea ice is, without question, on a declining trend, but Gore definitely erred in his use of preliminary projections and misrepresentations of research. Because Gore himself did not claim to have made these predictions, however, and because his statements applied specifically to summer sea ice in the Arctic, we rate the claim that Gore “predicted the ice caps will melt by 2014” as a mixture
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/
As far as Number 2, I’m “rich” already, so not concerned
Psile, just ran across this…
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution, Study Finds
Air pollution is the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States, and agriculture contributes in a number of ways. Fertilizer application, gas use, pesticide production and dust kicked up from tilling all affect air quality. But the sort of accounting done for the carbon footprint of foods hasn’t been done for their air pollution footprint.
That changed Monday with a study published in Nature Sustainability. It modeled how the production of a single crop, corn, contributes to air pollution in the United States. The researchers found that corn production accounts for 4,300 premature deaths related to air pollution every year in the United States. Ammonia from fertilizer application was by far the largest contributor to corn’s air pollution footprint
Corn is the largest agricultural crop in the United States. But you may not immediately associate air pollution with the endless fields of rolling green in Iowa or Illinois. That’s a mistake, according to study author Jason Hill, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota.
Do Healthy Diets Protect The Planet? As The U.N. Meets, A Focus On Sustainability
THE SALT
Do Healthy Diets Protect The Planet? As The U.N. Meets, A Focus On Sustainability
Previous work has found that agricultural practices — like fertilizer production, running tractors and tilling land — account for about 16 percent of all human-caused air pollution of a type called PM2.5. Atmospheric particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (for comparison, a human hair is about 50 micrometers wide) is classified as PM2.5, and exposure has been associated with cardiovascular problems, respiratory illness, diabetes and even birth defects.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/01/708818581/growing-corn-is-a-major-contributor-to-air-pollution-study-finds
Chalk another one up for why it’s too late….
“A contraction in German manufacturing that has sent investors fleeing for safe-haven assets is proving deeper than initially anticipated. IHS Markit’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for the sector slipped to 44.1 in March, worse than a flash reading of 44.7 that was already well below economist estimates.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-01/german-manufacturing-slump-deepens-in-warning-sign-for-euro-area?utm_source=google&utm_medium=bd&cmpId=google
“French banks called Saturday for an end to violence against branches, cash machines and personnel as the country braced for a 20th day of “yellow vest” protests. Since the “yellow vest” anti-government protests began in November, more than 760 banks have suffered damage.”
https://www.france24.com/en/20190330-french-banks-call-end-yellow-vest-violence
“”We face a widespread slowdown in growth across Europe, and in Italy we are headed for zero” growth, Tria [Italy’s Minister for the Economy] told an economic forum in Florence on Sunday… In the fourth quarter of 2018, the Italian economy contracted owing to a slowdown in exports, plunging it into a technical recession and worsening the government’s budget problems.”
https://www.thelocal.it/20190401/zero-growth-for-italy-this-year-economy-minister
if a person in such a high position says that they are “headed for zero” growth, it seems certain that he fears they are headed for “below zero” growth…
why does it seem that almost all economists can’t imagine (or at least admit) a number less than zero?
oh look, they “contracted” in Q4…
that doesn’t sound like “headed for zero”…
it’s already a negative number…
silly human race…
Since the banks control the government and its policies, it’s difficult to fault the GJ strategy.
Not looking good at all.
Nevertheless, your daily handpicked offerings of collapse nuggets are much appreciated. We need you now more than ever!
Thank you, Jupiviv. 😀
There was a bit of good news with an uptick in Chinese manufacturing data, although it might be a post lunar holiday bounce:
“China’s Caixin/Markit Manufacturing PMI expanded at the strongest pace in eight months in March, rising to 50.8 from 49.9, the highest level since July 2018.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-economy/global-factory-activity-weak-in-march-as-clouds-gather-idUKKCN1RD190
And in news that will, I’m sure, gladden every heart in the OFW comments section, Elon Musk has released a rap song (well an Auto-Tune dirge really) entitled ‘RIP Harambe’, a reference to the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla which was shot after a small boy fell into its enclosure in 2016:
there was (maybe still is) a meme on Twitter after Harambe bit the dust…
usually in response to tweets by the zoo…
they apparently were offended, but I thought it was hilarious…
D*cks Out For Harambe…
a tribute to him, don’t you think?
Hear, Hear – say that again! A big hurrah for Harry
Yes thanks Harry
thank Zeus for Harry…
the Doom has been growing weaker on OFW…
it’s good to see some major doses of Reality… ie Doom…
Europe is doing poorly. US stock market was up on a favorable report about China, but that still leaves the Europe problem.
“The White House doubled down Sunday on President Trump’s threat to close the U.S. border with Mexico, despite warnings that the move would inflict immediate economic damage on American consumers and businesses while doing little to stem a tide of migrants clamoring to enter the United States…
“The U.S.-Mexico border is a key artery in the global economy, with more than $611 billion in cross-border trade last year, according to the Commerce Department… The economic consequences of a complete shutdown would be immediate and severe, trade specialists said, with automakers and American farmers among the first to feel the pain.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-white-house-doubles-down-on-threat-to-close-us-mexico-border/2019/03/31/bd2e070a-53c9-11e9-9136-f8e636f1f6df_story.html?utm_term=.ec397a77f14b
“Soybeans were about $10.50 per bushel before Trump’s trade wars started. They fell substantially over the next two plus months to as low as $8.25 per bushel since China was a huge customer and decreased its purchases substantially… Forward selling soybeans looks even worse than corn…
“Unless there is a good upturn in price, soybean farmers will be in a world of hurt. For every $1 lower in the average price per bushel U.S. soybean farmers will see their revenue decrease by over $4 billion or about 10% of total revenue. Since costs don’t decrease, or at least very much, as revenue declines this lost revenue essentially drops to the bottom line.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2019/03/30/2019-is-the-year-farmers-will-feel-the-pain-from-trumps-trade-wars/#3a42f4f14838
1. If the land is flooded as badly as has been reported, there will be a decrease in production and prices will increase.
2. If prices for corn/soybeans fall costs for inputs will fall, if the farmer can’t pay, inputs are not sold, more land is not planted, corn/bean prices will increase.
The nation is being hit with sequential disasters, Boeing 737 is an export disaster, farming is a disaster, the border is a disaster. Somewhere it has been noted that civilizations collapse with too many concurrent or closely spaced disasters.
With regard to trade wars, is is possible the cc is maxed out and the “trade wars” are a sign we cannot pay for more stuff?
Interesting year, eh?
Dennis L.
Very.
This article suggests that at least 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of U.S. farmland are underwater – ““There’s thousands of acres that won’t be able to be planted,” Ryan Sonderup, 36, of Fullerton, Nebraska, who has been farming for 18 years, said in a recent interview.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/31/business/1-million-acres-u-s-cropland-ravaged-bomb-cyclone-floods-data-show/#.XKHhx5hKjIU
Farmers need a whole lot higher prices for quite a few crops. The price problem is partly related to the affordability problem for fuels in general that I have talked about.
Another prime example of a network interconnecting parts major fail….
We’ve only just begun…..more to come….
CORNING, Mo. — The widespread, severe flooding in the Midwest over the last month has exposed the vulnerabilities in a levee system that is now so full of holes that many here ruefully describe it as “Swiss cheese.”
With dozens of costly breaks across Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and nearby states, the surging waters have left large areas without even cursory flood protection.
“Breaches everywhere: multiple, multiple breaches,” said Tom Bullock, the top elected official in Holt County, Mo., where crews were rushing last week to patch a leaking levee that, if it failed completely, would flood the small town of Fortescue.
And with the fear of more floods in the coming years — and perhaps even the coming weeks — many people said living and farming near the water might not be viable much longer without major changes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/us/midwest-floods-levees.html
We were warned….no whining folks
The big issue seems to be
If you move the excess water from Nebraska, it will go somewhere else. Building a lot of levees doesn’t necessarily fix the problem.
“Another prime example of a network interconnecting parts major fail…”
yes, this is the result of increased complexity…
the NYT article begins with “Hundreds of miles of levees…”
these (man-made) levees are the actual cause of “major” flooding…
if there were no levees, there would be minor flooding yearly in various different locations… these locations would have been formerly known as “flood plains”… the areas where rivers flood into during a (spring) season of higher than usual rain and snow melt… a very normal statistical occurrence…
these seasons are going to happen “once in a while”…
it’s usually when humans decide to try to protect developed flood plain land that there becomes situations where there is “major” flooding because a levee was breached…
90+ percent of developed flood plain land stays “protected” by intact levees, and the water that should have flooded many areas in minor ways now becomes concentrated into the “major flooding” of one or a few areas…
silly human race…
Actually, the silt brought into these flood plains can help fertility of the area. But we thought that the level of flooding of one particular time period would be representative for the long term. (I doubt that is true anywhere.) And that we could use the flood plains for crops, without considering how the system really works.
Of course, governments are quick to step in with programs to help work around this problem. This only works for a while. Flood insurance on homes has historically been very underpriced. I am sure that taxpayers elsewhere will be expect to fix this problem.
“There’s been fairly extensive engineering work on it,” he said. “We figured out a way to get a big enough engine under the wing.”
The problem is that an airplane is a big, complicated network of interconnected parts. To get the engine under the 737 wing, engineers had to mount the engine nacelle higher and more forward on the plane. But moving the engine nacelle (and a related change to the nose of the plane) changed the aerodynamics of the plane, such that the plane did not handle properly at a high angle of attack.* That, in turn, led to the creation of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). It fixed the angle-of-attack problem in most situations, but it created new problems in other situations when it made it difficult for pilots to directly control the plane without being overridden by the MCAS.
On Wednesday, Boeing rolled out a software patch that it says corrects the problem, and it hopes to persuade the FAA to agree.
But note that the underlying problem isn’t really software, it’s with the effort to use software to get around a whole host of other problems
Hello Gail. Prime example of a complex newwork system of connecting parts that failed.
The MAX 8 STORY S INTERESTING, READ IT HERE…
https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2019/3/29/18281270/737-max-faa-scandal-explained
Complexity has its limits. It is easy to think that something will work, until something goes wrong that was unanticipated. Rushing to get through a project increases that chance of failure. Or trying to cover up the fact that the aerodynamics of the plane are now different, so it will fly differently, and pilots will need training on how to make the system work.
Australian property downturn spreads as most capital cities record falling values
https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/10319314-3×2-700×467.jpg
It’s spreading. Adelaide is the latest to record declines – 0.5 percent down for the quarter. Canberra is flat. Hobart is slowing and not far away. This will be EPIC!
“After 27 years, the Australian economy is finally facing a recession …low interest rates since the global financial crisis have led households’ debt-to-income ratio to an all-time high of 189%.”
https://www.afr.com/personal-finance/budgeting/reserve-bank-will-be-acting-too-late-to-stop-an-australian-recession-20190329-p5190e
“In a public statement on 27 March, the RBNZ [New Zealand] nstated that the Official Cash Rate (OCR) would stay at 1.75% for now. But they followed up with a warning:
“‘Given the weaker global economic outlook and reduced momentum in domestic spending, the more likely direction of our next OCR move is down.’
“That’s about as close to ‘batten down the hatches’ as you’ll ever hear from a central banker.”
https://www.moneymorning.co.nz/hang-on-tight-our-economy-heading-for-a-plunge-in-2019/2019/04/01/
Collapse will be stellar, downunder.
Hope our nearly departed FE has a live feed of his End of the World Party that all the Super Smart Smarties will attend that moved there to escape the end of BAU!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfian0oV6AI
Should be a blast here in South Florida….GONZO BABY>>>FULL THROTTLE
Collapse will be stellar, downunder.
You must be getting the 4 x 4 ready by now?
Not yet. 😉
The new situation in Slovakia after the presidential elections:
The newly elected president is a divorced woman living with a partner.
https://ekonomika.sme.sk/c/22088318/zuzana-caputova-prezidentkou-je-zena-s-partnerom.html?ref=trz
? Beside the msm cultural innuendo and the fact she is NGO puppet unknown to the public few weeks ago, the main story should be the dismal turnout, i.e. <25% vote legitimacy what a joke..
Yes, I am affraid there is and will be a problem with the acceptance of such a person.
The situation doesn’t sound promising.
why did you *not* vote her in?
Algeria another nation post peak oil with mass protests against the ruling elite.
After peak and decline and after the oil price collapse in 2014 Algeria has been posting large fiscal deficits and current account deficits while burning through their foreign reserves to keep the population from revolting.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/algeria-protests-demonstrations-arab-spring-2011-11391598
I can believe this. It oil and gas exporters who are particularly hurt, especially those who were already near the edge.
«Inequality is on the rise: gains have been concentrated with a small elite, while most have seen their fortunes stagnate or fall. Despite what scholars and journalists consider a worrying trend, there is no evidence of growing popular concern about inequality. In fact, research suggests that citizens in unequal societies are less concerned than those in more egalitarian societies. How to make sense of this paradox? I argue that citizens’ consent to inequality is explained by their growing conviction that societal success is reflective of a meritocratic process. Drawing on 25 years of International Social Survey Program data, I show that rising inequality is legitimated by the popular belief that the income gap is meritocratically deserved: the more unequal a society, the more likely its citizens are to explain success in meritocratic terms, and the less important they deem nonmeritocratic factors such as a person’s family wealth and connections.»
https://academic.oup.com/ser/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ser/mwy051/5299221
I can believe this.
Equality comes with less complex societies. Inequality comes with added complexity and technology. People who are wealthy in complex societies feel that they have worked for and deserved the success that they have gained. It is their own effort that they have expended that allows this wealth to exist. In fact, the pixels on the screen make it clear that it will be there forever. (or not!)
If everyone is a subsistence level farmer, then everyone has similar problems. Some may have particularly bad luck, such as a broken bone, or catching an illness that cannot be overcome, or some disease attacking a crop that has been planted. But these things are clearly not the result of your doing. It is more a matter of chance. You want the gods to be on your side, in the hope that this will help.
My experience with small farming communities is that they hang together in a crisis. Someone breaks a leg, everyone comes and pitches in to get the harvest in. Someone gets a fatal illness, neighbours employ the widow and children. Crop failure? “Here, have some of mine!”
When my wife left in 2012, dozens of neighbours came by and helped out in the greenhouse and with the goats. I could not have done it by myself.
Such first-hand experience is why I keep saying there are huge opportunities for cooperation in a low-energy future, whereas most people think it will be some combination of “Mad Max” and “dog eat dog.”
So if you have a choice between buying weapons and being a friend, I’ll wager the second to be much more valuable. You get friends by first being a friend.
The approach of sharing works well, when everyone has a little surplus. If everyone is coming up short (perhaps because they need to replace total calories and hadn’t really planned for such large need for food, or because there is a drought in a particular year and no one is doing well), then the situation may go downhill. I agree that sharing is optimal, as long as there is enough to go around, without simultaneously starving everyone.
Couldn’t agree more, Jan. In my world: “A stranger is a friend you haven’t yet met”
In terms of Venezuela, it seems the external commitment could be serious one and long term oriented indeed. As we speak China is landing their airlifted cargoes of humanitarian aid, and the previous accounts of increased Russian mil assistance were discussed recently as well..
A nice article about Russians in Venezuela:
http://boomfinanceandeconomics.com/#/
A direct link would be helpful. This one didn’t work for me.
The specific articles shown seem to change from time to time.
Sorry Gail, OK try this:http://boomfinanceandeconomics.com/#/
Gerry is a personal friend in Brisbane, we Skype regularly and he has been an immense help with my book on fact checking (I got lots wrong in the first run a few years ago). I can’t speak highly enough of him and of his knowledge and experience. He is a retired medical doctor.
Any thoughts on this article?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-29/new-grand-strategy-united-states
Dennis L.
Yes, Dennis, I read it today. It does seem to make sense. I have sent it to one of my mentors and hope to get a reply this evening.
The article is a rambling incoherent mess.
ZeroHedge makes money from advertising and have lots of pop up ads. They generate sensationalist articles to draw in people. The posts people write in response to articles tend not to have much substance. I use to read their stuff until one day I realized it was just an entertainment site.
I don’t disagree with your assessment of ZH but I do use them to link to other more reasonable sites – this helps my research but I always try and fact check. I use an AdBlocker, otherwise I would be unable to read ZH anyway.
This reference site is the most sensible i have ever found:
http://boomfinanceandeconomics.com/#/
My mentor says: “rubbish, please ignore and read me instead!”
http://boomfinanceandeconomics.com/#/
I am afraid I wasn’t very impressed by the article.
You are not alone, Gail, my feedback has been negative so far.
Climate “stress tests”.
https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2019-09.pdf
This is a Federal Reserve paper relating to what the Federal Reserve can do about climate change. I would summarize as “not much.” I found this paragraph useful:
“While the effects and risks of climate change are relevant factors for the Fed to consider…”
At least they acknowledge it as a risk. That’s something more than nothing.
They don’t figure out that there is fundamentally nothing they can do to fix the situation, however. Cutting off all investment might theoretically help, but it kills the economy. Substituting wind and solar is worthless, as a solution.
I see Gail’s repeated point that nothing much can be done. Everyone is still indulging the vain effort to make a centralized global system work in an age of dwindling energy.
Can’t be done!
No one whatsoever is considering how, and how it might work, to decentralize the global economic order. If no one even thinks about it, they won’t have a clue as to how or whether it could help as a way to live within a reasonable carbon budget.
A decentralized economy would be different from a centralized one, and applying centralized formulas to it won’t get us anywhere.
As Norman Pagett tirelessly tries to get across, money is not the same thing as the energy it inadequately tokenizes. When real food energy is compromised, you can’t eat money to compensate for it. So why talk so much about money? Why talk so little about food, or the planning required to produce it?
when you read all the stuff put out on these problems, right across the internet, it comes down to three basic headings
wish politics
wish science
wish economics
we must–we have to–we will—we can—add whichever future fulfils your current fantasy
(as in,,,, we must use less energy….)
something must be done is the prime mantra—solutions offered exclusively cover just one of the biggies of energy, population, climate change at any one time
Never all three because in all three lies the impossible
fix one (or try to) and the other two will rear up and bite you in the ass
yet those three wishes keep on getting repeated–to offer the slightest contradiction is to be accused of doomerism
another favourite—a 2 deg temp rise will cost the world economy $50 trn, as if a wad of cash can somehow be found to rectify it—then all will be well after we’ve settled the bill presumably after printing the money
Weirdly equated with getting an insurance payout after a car crash
Jan has got an answer in Canada
I’m happy to see Jan here. We all see things a little differently, but that should be the point of a forum, where you can combine, test, and pick or choose among ideas. 🙂
Agreed, and for me it is enjoyable to keep learning every day! :-))))
More of a question than an answer! There are no guarantees.
But pick a strategy, and work on it. That is the antidote to despair.
Then if you don’t make it, at least you can say you tried, rather than just sat back and cried.
Lovely response – positive thinking transends all dispair
Wait… what?
I don’t really think “thinking” transcends anything, except as a necessary first step before doing.
I was writing about doing, not thinking!
There are a whole lot of pollyanna “positive thinkers” out there who are in for a rude awakening.
Yep got it – but first there must be an idea which is the most powerful of all memes – and then comes action – NO?
I look at our goats, and come to the conclusion that “ideas” are vastly over-rated, part of human hubris.
“Consider how the lilies grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these.” I feel the same way about our goats. They don’t over-think things, and manage to get by quite well.
Yea, it’s good to have some sort of simple plan before acting, but don’t over-think things too early. As I used to tell my consulting clients, “If you’re not doing incremental development, you’re going to get excremental results.”
The hallmark of current human civilization seems to be that we spend way too much time thinking and meeting and jaw-flapping than actually getting things done.
“When all is said and done, more will have been said than done.”
Ah, the wisdom of words, thank you Jan – your comments are exactly right. I am a poor accountant, and I think in terms of ideas and money measured by fiat currency. I have been conditioned by the many years of toil in an environment much removed from reality. Of this I am aware and did something about it when the men in white coats carried me off in 1990 to spend a few happy weeks in the funny farm.
And then I found a new realisation, a world outside the mundane, a place to be myself divested of the material things and rooted in a belief of an ever powerful HIgher Power to whom I passed my own will and acquiesced to a will of a power greater than I.
I think the “can’t be done” talk is focused on a population of seven billion or more.
I agree, “can’t be done” for everybody. But our situation reminds me of two guys out hiking in the woods. All of a sudden, a grizzly bear charges them! One of them shouts, “LET’S RUN!” The other one screams, “ARE YOU CRAZY? WE CAN’T OUTRUN THAT BEAR!” The first one calmly replies, “No, but I can outrun YOU!”
The coming situation may have a tiny, tiny number of “winners.” None of us are likely to be in that group.
But among the “losers” — those who are less-well-off than they are now — there will be “ultimate losers,” who will lose their ability to live, and then there will be those who will struggle, but somehow manage.
Your job (and yours, and yours, and yours…) is to be in that second group of “losers.” There’s nothing you can do to guarantee a seat on the lifeboat, but there are a diverse array of options to consider.
Some may bank on providing services to the tiny number of winners. Some may think they have a way to stay in a semi-civilized state, through hoarding precious metals or other things they think will be of use in future cities. Some are convinced that having large stocks of weapons and ammunition will save the day. Some will work to take personal sovereignty over their food supply — impossible in a city.
Have you chosen a strategy? Are you working on it?
the winners, unless there’s a nuclear pollution event, will be those:
a—too far away from civilisation to notice its gone
b– too far away to reached by the unpleasant bands of stragglers left
c—not too badly affected by climate change
Yep, we do have strategy here in UK, Bruton, Somerset to be exact. It is based on community and cooperation, melding mutual skills and survival techniques ( I lived through the Vietnam era). So I am happy to share our vision with others of like minds:
email: peter@underco.co.uk
Jan+Norman> great summary of the options, as always in reality it will be a bit overlapping scenario, but you called it correctly.
For instance, we know there were rather elaborate ‘agriculture’ (no till) schemes going dozens of thousands years ago even in northerly climates, so that serves as bottom scenario to which it is ‘very likely’ possible to revert for at least fraction of today’s pop granting no large scale enviro type of universal destruction to occur be it from nuclear war or quasi BAU continuing to over-burn various stuff into the future..
Right. I don’t really have a problem with people trying to work on a solution for themselves and their families.
I do believe (like Gail) that there is a higher self organizing, physics power, and that ignoring this gets us into trouble. I personally can’t get any further than right now. I’m not bothering my head about 10 or 100 years hence. That will work out in ways that are now unforeseeable. Commonsense points to an existing and downward trajectory of decline and privation (within the current global way of energy thinking). MY problem is that these are not being seen for the dwindling energy supply to run BAU that they are. The only things we see are preposterous ideas for “renewables” to run BAU. Which is another thing that can’t be done. This blog is the most clear and commonsensical way to sift out what is happening with energy. What we also need, to agree with Jan, is a strategy that makes more sense than mental passivity. That requires imagination and creativity in addition to commonsense.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
“Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It’s something we call heart power. Once a man has made this commitment, nothing will stop him short of success.”
Vince Lombardi circa 20th century
STRATEGY AND POPULATION
I actually don’t have an opinion as to whether we need more, the same number, or fewer people. (I’m trying to see a way to figure how the financial and food/physical-sustenance systems works when you don’t mix up or confuse them. They seem interchangeable now, but may not be the same thing. In our system, people routinely evade food/physical-sustenance energy to chase down money.)
How much of the confusion relates to social protest? People march all over demanding things. All these things don’t converge strategically. I don’t know how to assess all these protests and marches, other than to say they don’t inspire me. Maybe there are points that I don’t understand.
What I DO believe is strategic is abortion rights. If you believe we need fewer people in order to survive, well there’s your issue. (I believe in abortion rights for different reasons.)
Since the scattershot appeals for change tends to obviate focus, I say that there is no issue nearly as strategic as abortion rights. If I had to avoid all other issues and choose just one, I would choose abortion rights.
…….and resilience. Only by combining together in groups, being mutually supportive, can we survive the coming storm, IMHO. First, is to prepare and that means information and knowledge:
A free pdf of my book is available by request to: peter@underco.co.uk
Peter,
Resilience as a goal is key. So, trying to feel my way here…
Resilience = Goal
Decentralization = Strategy
Whatever Brexit mess can get others to help begin the decentralization process = Tactics
But how many goals, strategies and tactics must there be? That’s where I’m lost for a philosophical methodology. Abortion rights is a big part of the Irish progressive movement–led by women. Getting in step with them might be a plan. Everything hinges on Ireland, it seems.
Yes, Artleads, your conjecture about Ireland is IMO correct. The whole Irish problem has never gone away – it was ‘fudged’ by Blair et al. and the Good Friday agreement is tenuous at best. There will never be true peace until Ireland is united. Then the Scots will achieve independence and the final break up of the UK will be complete.
And don’t forget that the Scots who are dead set on independence and will not comply with UK leaving the EU. I don’t believe that UK will ever actually leave (although I voted for it) and my Chapter 6 about the EU describes how we were fooled into joining in the first place. I publish firm evidence of Heath’s fraud during the process.and I am happy to email a pdf copy of my book if you wish to read all about it: peter@underco.co.uk
IMO Brexit is all theatre and is typical of the way the ruling elite in Britain go about their work. UK Is the most secretive society in the whole world:
Peter,
I’m glad your book deals with the UK. Please send me the PDF version. I’m working on a book, but it’s about my perspective on art, not by any means a scholarly approach to any artists’ work. (For some reason, I’m boxed in to the art of Edward Hopper and Saul Steinberg, the latter being a doomer of epic proportions, and I have a major time crunch preparing for an exhibition this month featuring the two. I have to put my own writing on hold, much less anyone else’s. I hope you understand.)
I read very poorly, slowly, and little. Yet my life is about attempting impossible things (driven by experience, observation, intuition. . I’m overwhelmed by it all.
How I learn from Gail is mostly through her short responses to comments. Same with Norm. Any chance you could share tiny excerpts of your writing on UE/UK, UK secrecy, the prospects for UK breakup…? One of the impossible things I’m about is for the UK to break up and not break up at the same time. It is by path to unity-through-decentralization. The queen wants Charles to head the commonwealth. Interesting possibilities there.
Great stuff, Artleads, and I like Hopper as well as being. like you, a slow reader – I have to cover every word, sometimes repeating paragraphs until I get it. I don’t read fiction often as I am too busy updating my own factual knowledge. I share your concerns about organisations in the future and perhaps my book will give you a perspective. Chapter 6 on the European Union might spark some interest.
Anyway, just email me at: peter@underco.co.uk and I will respond with a pdf which can be loaded on a Kindle. Always happy to exchange ideas on email if necessary.
Peter Underwood,
I’m going to try sending you one or two email messages now. One may just have a single letter (a glitch I don’t have time to investigate more than I have already). The other would be fine, except that I now have my settings only on what I sent, and can’t figure out what is being sent to me. So please acknowledge receipt of what I send in both places (if possible).
Thanks.
Gail, are you an optimist or pessimist regarding Americas energy independence? I just read two articles with different views on the issue:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/18/americas-shale-industry-faces-constraints
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonlack/2019/01/28/american-energy-independence-is-imminent/#117d98382870
Energy independence can be used in two different senses:
(1) Get along without energy-related inputs from other countries or
(2) Country is a net energy exporter.
The article in the Economist is using it is the first sense; the article in Forbes is using it in the second sense.
I think that the truth of the matter is, in today’s complex, interdependent world, no country is energy independent, not even Saudi Arabia. If we could live using only sticks we pick up off the ground, together with simple devices (made locally) to ignite these sticks, then we could be truly energy independent.
As it is, the economy is networked in so many ways that even wind and solar are very much dependent on imports from around the world for replacement parts. So are electric cars, and the charging equipment of electric cars.
The Economist talks about the US importing 8 million barrels a day of oil. It is not that the US imports 8 million barrels of oil a day for our own use; it is that the US is selling refining services, to those who need the kind so services we provide. At the same time, we are exporting some of our oil, so it can be put to use more efficiently in someone else’s refinery, elsewhere.
For the years 2018, amounts seem to be as follows (in barrels per day):
Crude oil imported: 8.0 million bpd
Products imported 2.2 million bpd
Crude oil exported: 2.0 million bpd
Products exported 5.6 million bpd
Thanks, makes sense that distinction. What sources are you relying on for the numbers you get?
The EIA publishes amounts of imports, exports, and net imports in a lot of different breakdowns–by country, or by crude oil vs all products, or products of many different kinds.
‘Energy independence’ is another of those phrases which are bandied about, but are devoid of real content. No wonder politicians adore it.
It must be the case that, soon as a certain technological threshold – and level of economic sophistication – has been passed, true energy independence becomes impossible: if you have the resources, you surely won’t have everything required to process and use those resources.
I suppose the UK in the early stages of the exploitation of coal was truly independent in this sense, having also the wood and iron reserves to derive all necessary materials for production from within national boundaries, but it didn’t last for long.
Scouring the world for fertilizer, and cheap cereals and meat, in order to feed the increased population and necessary workforce also quickly became the order of the day.
Texas shale oil contaminated….is being rejected.
“Infected U.S. Shale Oil Is Being Turned Away by Asian Buyers” article appearing on Finance.yahoo.com
It turns out exporting oil laced with chemicals is not so simple…
“The complex web of U.S. pipelines, tanks and export terminals that’s helped make America the world’s top oil producer is causing a headache for some crude buyers.
As various types of crude pass through the supply chain from inland shale fields spanning Texas to North Dakota, they risk picking up impurities before reaching Asia — the world’s biggest oil-consuming region. Specifically, refiners are worried about the presence of problematic metals as well as a class of chemical compounds known as oxygenates, which can affect the quality and type of fuel they produce.
Two refiners in South Korea — the top buyer of U.S. seaborne supply — have rejected cargoes in recent months due to contamination that makes processing difficult. Growing North American output from dozens of fields pushes everything from highly-volatile oil to sticky residue through shared tributaries and trunk pipes. Smaller carriers then take cargoes from shallow-water ports to giant supertankers in the Gulf of Mexico for hauling to far-away buyers.”
Can not this be solved by the noble MIC just by pointing a gun at their heads?
Yes, but there is the following economic plane disruption anyway: problem with these pollutants in chemical processing when used as feed stock as they cripple the high tech infrastructure very fast, and it’s expensive to add on various purifying loops and or altering the existing chem plants in some large degree to begin with..
This could be potentially very disturbing story forward.
As the system gets more complex, it gets more specific on its requirements. Contaminated fuels mess up the system more than they would otherwise.
I suppose that there is also the option of more manipulation by those in charge. If they really don’t want to import oil from the US (for other reasons), they can claim some chemical contamination that occurs everywhere is more of a problem than it really is.
A good point about complexity: after all, if you just need ‘fire’ to warm yourself or cook food at the end of the day, there is a very wide range of options: not just wood logs and coal, but twigs, thorn bushes, furze, ling, peat, cattle dung, even FE’s famous tires for cooking rats.
For instance, I’m burning prunings from old rose and laurel bushes just now, corks from wine bottles and scrap cardboard form my workshop, but as complexity increases the options diminish.
Vary interesting, thanks.
I’m beginning to not believe any article headlines. They’re just too wrong, too much of the time. For example, about week ago there was an article claiming oil price was precipitously descending due to forecasts of recession. Well, not only did oil price not drop it went up. WTI is now over $60 a barrel. Fact is growth, however it was generated, has been about 2-3% in the US for a few quarters now. That’s not anywhere near a recession, which requires 2 consecutive months in a row of negative GDP growth. I think we all need to be on alert that sensational headlines sell newspapers so to speak, but there is no governing body forcing the truth. More and more publications are willing to come up with all sorts of wild stuff to get people’s attention. For some reason Google news publishes articles from express.uk.co and they are the worst. If you see any articles of theirs I suggest ignoring it completely.
It would be interesting to see him much of the current BREXIT turmoil is down to much reduced North Sea oil revenue. There’s been a significant decline and loading up on debt to compensate just makes everyone poorer
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/oil-and-gas-revenues/
It could be simpler than that. Given the mismatch between a growing population at the end of the oil economy (caused by the oil economy in its better days), the UK is WAY too big to govern from the center. It’s got to divide among tall the inherent divisions–north and south Ireland, Scotland, Wales–let those entities govern themselves within tighter borders and also have them coordinate an agreement as to some common denominator under the UK umbrella. The UK’s global arm becomes the commonwealth that, at some level, has a vote along with the rest of the UK. How you split up England is harder to imagine.
Wonderful stuff, Artleads, your ideas are excellent. IMO it won’t be long before the breakdown of the UK union comes about, instigated by the N. Irish no less. They hold the strings so far anyway!
Thanks, Peter. I got the basic idea from a Welch guy on another blog. Then kept it on the back burner till Brexit came along and declared as how it was offering itself as the nail for those thoughts to hammer. Or like a well placed lob in volley ball to hit over the net. He also suggested that the aristocracy/monarchy had a huge roll to play through using their immense land holdings to settle and feed people. I don’t like that. Those lands are too special to be messed up by the rabble. So I say that the thread holding the union together after decentralization should be the monarchy. Its land should not be despiled or split up, but used for the highest aesthetic quality settlement that complements the land’s beauty. Buildings would be built from scrap, and set the model for a new stage of civilization, an exceedingly decentralized and low energy one. The military must enforce that royal hegemony. Serfdom, yes. But not a mindless, unimaginative or uncivilized sort. Back to the future.
Excellent suggestion Artleads, the monarchy should remain in charge. The Saxons had a very good structure of government with Yeoman farmers owning their own land and all very free enterprise until William came along and took it away from them and gave it to all his mates and feudalism prevailed.
The Doomsday Book was William’s device to legitimise this land grab in England, writing it into law, and it has been this way ever since. You may know that ‘freehold’ is just that: one holds the land ‘free of rent’ but the ultimate ownership is in the hands of the crown supported by the military.
This is not true in USA where land is held free of encumberance and the landowner even owns that which is under the land and you can witness what mess that has created over there.
I do think your ideas are excellent because land use is a very important aspect of sustainability and should remain under central control. I envisage regional governments within England much along the lines already prepared during the cold war in the event of nuclear attack.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/protect-survive-nuclear-war-republished-pamphlet
we all like to own the land we live on, but ultimately owning the land has been the source of most of our problems
—ie–a lunatic fringe always wants to own somebody else’s land as well
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/our-world-is-not-our-property-eec56987036b
Noted Norman, thank you, and I hope to read your book soon, but there are several in the backlist!
Anyway to owning land? As a libertarian, I favour the primacy of the individual as long as it doesn’t hurt another. The allocation of land ownership is a problem but I do think that the concept of ‘land held in common’ might mitigate the worst effects of personal ownership. I think we might combine both concepts to create a cooperative community. I haven’t thought it through in enough in detail to date, but I will pursue the idea.
I’ve spent a great deal of research, investigation, and experimentation in this area.
I’m convinced that it is the way to go in the future, the alternative being “big man” feudalism. The two may well co-exist, with common ownership surviving by emulating things that keep feudal lords in power, while practicing egalitarianism.
From what archaeologists can tell us, humans have always been communal, especially when there was only 40 watts of exosomatic energy per person. Then, we learned to store grain, and community took a hit and hierarchy emerged. Then, we learned how to conquer “empty” lands, and finally, to exploit 200,000,000-year-old dead things, and individualism reigned supreme.
A return to the mean is inevitable. I have no doubt that this will end as we begin a low-energy existence. Click on my name to see more.
HI Jan, the click didn’t work, maybe we can exchange emails? peter@underco.co.uk
You and I seem to have much in common and it is good to meet a fellow traveller. After all a “stranger is a friend you haven’t yet met”
My daughter is setting up a bee colony this year and is fearful of the disease that is prevalent. I have only been able to advise the non-use of ’round up’ in the garden, but know little else. You may well have remedies.
Anyway, perhaps we can exchange emails?
I have thoroughly soured on modern democracy, particularly “voting,” which is two wolves and a sheep, voting on what’s for dinner, or three children and their parents, voting on having ice cream for dinner.
Voting is the most easily perverted form of decision-making possible, because it ultimately is all about short-term self-interest, totally removing group-interest and even long-term self-interest from the picture.
This is perhaps why the US has been hell-bent on imposing it all over the world, because all you have to do is go in there and spread around a bunch of money just before the election, and it’s yours.
I see how monarchy, principled by noblesse obligé, could be much better than voting. But I also think the almost-extinct knowledge of indigenous people still has time to influence, given half a chance. These systems are generally a form of elder-led consensus, much like Quaker or Amish self-governance.
Here in Canada, indigenous people are making huge strides, thanks in part to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which Canada has embraced, which guarantees indigenous people the right to select their own form of governance. The racist and obsolete Indian Act of 1876 imposes voting on tribes that are under treaty, and predictably, the treaty tribes “vote for” crap like fracking and pipelines across territory they don’t even govern, whereas the hereditary chiefs of un-ceded territory almost unanimously oppose such things, as their mandate is to look seven generations in the future.
We have a tendency to say, “Well, it has problems, but it’s the best system we can come up with,” when faced with criticism of voting and democracy. And then, systems that have been working well for some 10,000 years pop up. In Canada, at least, they’re getting some attention.
Thank you Jan for your share about Canada. In 1997 I spent time with the first nation people in Texas and learned a great deal about the essence of coexistence with nature. I also got some great CDs of their wonderful music which I play whenever I am a little down, which is not often in the UK summer but more so in the dark, dank, cold and gloomy winters here which I can’t bear, having spent so much time in Cape Town.
Your points about governance are well taken and I must confess that I haven’t reached any meaningful conclusions so far. Norman has some good advice about land ownership and I must confess to being more attracted to larger areas of land being held in common with small allotments for individual enterprise.
Artleads: for aesthetic development, you might look at ‘Poundbury’ , inspired by the Prince of Wales – people love it, although the metropolitan elite sneer…..
Meanwhile, the University here, famous for its beautiful medieval buildings – in some of which I shivered and banged my head on low beams as a student – has built ‘Eddington’, a phoney name for a suppurating Modernist boil on the face of the Earth, replacing good fields…..
The joke about Eddington is that the architects said it would be so beautiful, they wouldn’t plant any trees ‘as people would want to look at it’! Are these people on crack cocaine?
So true Xabier, and I have visited this wonderful example of the Prince of Wales’s vision. It is but an idea, a place to imagine a future of serenity and peaceful coexistence. And when the pressures of resource limitiations are obscured, it is indeed a wonderful palace. BUT what now?
tHE wELCH GUY WAS SPEAKING (i THINK) OF A uk WITH CLOSED BORDERS BUT STILL CENTRALIZED. (sorry, caplock error) But what if we somehow decentralize the UK itself while keeping it united? In fact, despite there not being the same linguistic variegation in the UK as in the UE, why not make the UK a mini UE? You wouldn’t have to concoct relationships out of thin air. These are already there historically. Couldn’t the UK pretty much borrow the governance formula that the UE has now? All in miniature and based on British civilization? Make Great Britain great again…but in a low-energy way? Somebody should go speak to Charles.:-)
Yes, all very good ideas. I think Charles will have much to say on the subject, especially when he takes the throne (if he does) – he could abdicate in preference to a younger William III – rather ironic that, since the first William started it all conquering and uniting England!
Peter, “William III” has already been taken I’m afraid. He was WIlliam of Orange, who reigned in Britain from 1689 to 1702. And WIlliam IV is taken too—1830 to 1837. So the current Duke of Cambridge, should he become King, will be WIlliam V.
Speaking of abdications, the current Japanese Emperor is scheduled to abdicate on 30 April this year in favor if his eldest son, which means Japan is going to enter a whole new era. The new era name is due to be announced on April 1 and it’s the biggest subject in the news in Japan just now. I find it interesting that the UK and Japan are both starting off new eras almost simultaneously—In the UK case it’s the post-Brexit era—but the contrast in how these respective changes are being handled couldn’t be greater. I was expecting Brexit to occur first, but that’s up in the air now.
Well done Tim thank you – what a faux pas! I must had a a senior moment which is happening quite often these days – Ah the wisdom of years?
So I didn’t know about the Japan story, and as you say, a rather progression of events in a completely mode. I await the Brexit outcome with trepidation.
However, he essence of nut-job Nationalism, Welsh and Scots, is that it rejects the idea of ‘Britishness’.
This is what nationalist politicians feed off: a very nice living, without much hope of ever having to bear the responsibility of independence. …..
The Scots like to complain that England ‘took our oil wealth’ – otherwise they would have been another little Norway. The Scots Nationalists are always beating that drum, and it appeals to the self-pity inherent in most nationalisms. And as always, there is some grain of truth in it.
But they rather conveniently forget that without the (utterlyruthless) expanding Empire run from London, Scotland would have remained the impoverished, semi-barbaric backwater that it was until the mid-18th century: Scots had full access to the fruits of that Empire, through trade, the armed forces and colonial/central government posts, and grew rich in the way that the Irish were not permitted to.
That tide of colonial money built the New Town of Edinburgh and the great, highly-improved, landed estates of Scotland, and allowed Scotland to become at long last, for the first time in its history, a civilised and prosperous region, and able to make a distinguished contribution to the Enlightenment,
You win some, you lose some: today, we are ALL going to be losers, in pretty short order……
Ah yes Xabier, You see, I am ENGLISH because I was born in England of English parents (mother is Anglo/Saxon). My wife is South African and she is BRITISH by naturalisation (at vast expense after many tests and interviews) BUT she can never be ENGLISH even though her grandparents where English from Anglo/Saxon stock because she wasn’t born here..
Ummm, it’s all a bit mixed up around here because my father comes from VIKING stock having been born in East ANGLIA which got invaded in the 800s by the VIKING settlers but eventually were beaten by King Alfred the Great (he of the burnt cakes) and then the DANEGELD was set up and ( a tax levied in Anglo-Saxon England to buy off Danish invaders in the reign of Ethelred II (978–1016);) Not long after 850AD, the VIKINGS took over the EAST of the country, right up to YORK which is of course a VIKING town/city.
The NORMANS (NORTH MEN) invaded in 1066 and we all started speaking FRENCH but the NORMANS weren’t FRENCH they were VIKINGS having landed on the Cherbourg penninsula in the 800s when Eric Bloodaxe and his mates missed England by mistake and sailed down the channel to Normandy.
I think ENGLAND comes from the root of the ANGLES who came over with the Saxons from Germany in the 500s. But I also live in WESSEX which is short for the WEST SAXONS as opposed to ESSEX from the EAST SAXONS and SUSSEX being the SOUTH SAXONS. The NORTH SAXONS lived in MERCIA just to confuse things.https://www.britannica.com/place/Mercia
So there you have it – but it might be all wrong – as history is so often distorted as you know.
Thanks for the great analysis, Xabier. There probably has to be a ruthless dictatorship of the military and elites throughout Britain? But how do you do that in an opportunistic manner (somewhat bottom up, riding the waves of inherent trajectories of a given place) rather than top down, one-size-fits-all?
Yep, I have encouraged people to watch the Brexit related ‘drama’ recently for this purpose, especially with the evolving and self revealing balkanization of the core unit of former empire, as these pressure cooker events tend to unmask pent up grievances. For example the Scottish nationalists were pretty pumped up to immediately announce push for another round of secession activities today in the House. But there are many other interesting topics to follow, like the neo feudal connotations for the longer term etc.
exactly what I’ve been banging on about since this Brexit nonsense started
The EU was a construct of prosperous democracy which was supposed to last forever to stop Europeapeans fighting each other as they have done for 1000 years
that lasted until the oil started to run out—not just here but everywhere, plus the disruption caused by climate change
What nobody sees, of course, is that the USA is in exactly the same situation–but under a different name. The economic system is collapsing so a fascist POTUS gets hired to fix it, but the problem of holding together is exactly the same
folks here want Britain to be great again—missing the point that Britain was only great for those who didn’t have to work for a living
anyone interested should google what it was like for everybody else.
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/the-european-union-was-a-construct-of-infinite-prosperity-7a401c225171
Copied and posted elsewhere. Very educational. Wish this could be wrestled down to a much shorter version that could be carried around like Mao’s little red book? 🙂
I grew up in the slums of the East End of London. We had electricity and running water but the water was cold and the toilets were outside. I remember the house-proud housewives in our street always cleaning the windows, washing clothes and linen by hand and putting it through the mangle, and then hanging it out on the washing line in the back yard to dry. And as they did this, they would be singing, or humming “la la la la laaaa!” These women were poor, dirt poor, often not-knowing-where-next week’s-rent-money-was-coming-from poor. But on the whole they were happy. I am quite certain that they were far happier and more content that most Londoners are today.
If we want Britain to be great again, we need to make Britain happy again. And if we want Britain to be happy again, we have to approach the issue obliquely, because the pursuit of happiness is a bit like the hunting of the snark. A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat.
my childhood was exactly the same–charging around in a post industrial landscape with open pitshafts to fall into seemed a normal childhood to me. Was it really always sunny punctuated with white christmases?
I was lucky, looking back. Polio would have put me in an iron lung, and my parents could have done nothing about it.
Health was a chance thing
I caught no nasty incurable diseases, never needed medical care, dad was always working, i was bright and became moderately successful, as did my 3 siblings
organised my own life the way i wanted it, more or less
had healthy kids–then grandkids the same
yet I always felt happiest at my grans place–which was even more primitive–why was that?
but happiness is relative to current existence—as i say to brexiteer friends—do you REALLY want to go back to the 60s?–50s–40s?
it seems they want a return to some mythical time of bliss, underpinned by modern amenities. A total lack of understanding that surplus energy created the nation as we knew it, and lack of that energy will dismember it.
That applies everywhere—
They want a return to the good old days—but still expect bananas all year round.
there seems to be a fixation that the time of empire and stuff was when britain was great
It was great only because we sat on vast reserves of coal and iron, with the expertise to turn that into ships and cannon before anyone else did—pure luck again
The British navy was as big as any other two navies combined.
What we conveniently forget is the millions of workers who sweated to extract that coal and iron, (my dad was one of them) and the millions who died using it as weapons. That was where the “Great” part came from, not some form of collective happiness or housewvies cleaning windows
that coal and iron (and oil) has now gone.
happiness was just accepting your lot, not a state of British empire pride. That was political feedstock
Those who organised the wars (going right back) reaped the profit of conflict
Back in the day–i hadn’t figured that out. Now I have
Jesus was looking after you, Norman: that’s why you didn’t fall into one of those pit-shafts, and survived to become End of More. 🙂
The Empire was the dream of financiers, industrialists and insatiably greedy aristocrats, from the 17th century on, never the working people of Britain; and happiness was a more-or less full stomach and a fire at the end of the day.
Excellent Norman!
Touché, Norman, you have almost described my happy upbringing to a tee, but I was in Somerset for most of my formative years and my father was a cobbler.
I too prospered due to the sacrifice of my parents made to ensure my priveliged education – I never looked back. But I would never dream of returning to those dark and unhygenic days – it was never the ‘good old days’ but then rose-tinted glasses never fails in retrospect.
But I fear that my children and grandchildren will be facing those privations of the past, so the point of my book for them is to at least understand why it is/has happened and how to prosper in the new emergent economy that follows..
lol
i think my kids/grandkids think my writings are just a useful way of keeping me free of dementia, (though those who have are unaware of it anyway) –and thus saving them the bother of looking after me
i often wonder about their innermost thoughts on it all, they dont tell me
i really have no idea
I’m curious if in the UK (what areas) there is still something to go back to (as in Grandma’s farm) or did that option disappear with earlier industrialization when everyone moved to the cities or mines and is no longer an option. Here in Poland it has really only been in the last 20-30 years that the kids started moving to the city to sell insurance to each other and serve expensive coffee. Some of them still come back to help during harvest. But the house and farm is still there and operational (even if only marginally). In other words, if push comes to shove, they have something to come back to. What happens when London and other large cities now longer have the appeal they once did?
That sort of rural connection you mention in Poland still exists in Spain, but has been destroyed in Britain, on the whole.
Most farms in Britain were rented from larger landowners, so there is often no family connection to the land that can survive multiple generations. .
But my Catalan cousin is set to marry (I hope) the son of a factory worker, who still has a small farm (olives, fruit trees, almonds) as his inherited property, having a foot in the city and one in the country.
My own family sold our small estate after 400 yrs and put it all into property and investments: I don’t feel too bad about that, as I think the land may soon become a drought area, and the village (‘Stony Place’ ) is so dull even the stray dogs commit suicide…..
Hi ssincoski, I live in rural Somerset in UK (The south west) and there are plenty of farms and land to service our local area. Yes, many young people have emigrated to the city especaily London to seek their fortune as has ever been the case.
Nevertheless. our farms etc are still here and when they decide to return then they will be welcome, except that they will have to work HARD. Living on the land is not easy and they can throw away their cell phones and social media crap, because they will have to learn how the real wealth is created!
I have written a book about all this, and much more, to help prepare the younger generations to adapt to the new economy which is to come. A free pdf of my manuscript is available by email to : peter@underco.co.uk
I am doing this to help our youngsters gain pre-knowledge prior to the collapse.
I agree! This is happening in the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) too — young people who find cities no longer want them are going back to their traditional villages, where they can at least eat and have a (shared) roof over their head, in exchange for farm work.
Here in North America, young people are perhaps 3-4 generations removed from the land. The “villages” have been bought up, torn down, and consolidated into mega-farms. Even the medium-sized towns have largely been Mall•Wart-ized, with the local businesses driven out by big-box stores. There is no place for people to go back to.
Oh, the desperation is evident in your note. I feel so sorry for those afflicted. The USA has so much land, surely it has to be put to good use?
Yes, the US has land, but it doesn’t have land culture, that having been replaced by capitalism.
As I said, the small villages and towns that were set up around an agricultural life-style are just about completely gone. A few survive by catering to retirees. Not many of those still have a feed store or farm supplies store. Most have a dozen realtors, a half-dozen builders and developers, and a Home Depot for retired hobby farmers. None of them really support subsistence agriculture very well.
Even family farms are caught up in the seemingly endless spectre of rising property values. Mostly, farming here has become merely something to do while you’re waiting to cash in on your appreciation.
Oh dear Jan, it sounds rather sad. I know that there are answers, and you of all people know too. So, forget the rest, focus on what you can do for your commuity and venture forth regardless. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?
I’m actually of colonial stock on my fathers side. The old family homestead is now a dilapidated shack on 2.5 acres (down from 600 acres or so 200 years ago). A couple Great Aunts still own it as a “vacation” property, but one refuses to contribute to the upkeep so it looks almost abandoned. My people settled in the West Virginia hills, and the closest town has been dying a slow death for 80 years. Its sad, but there is literally nothing resembling resilience or self sufficiency there. Anyone of talent or ambition left long ago. A shame, as the land itself is beautiful.
All that being said, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who have a family farm to return to, and I live in Ohio, which is prime farm land.
This is hard to figure out. It’s not as if this happy poverty could happen in the absence of relatively evil empire and its wars, is it? As to the aristocracy: it owns/controls the land (allowing for the freehold system someone mentioned), and the alternative to their control of it is individualistic ownership by the rabble. Which one do we want?
True, empires bring peace to the heartland, often after terrible civil wars: while the housewives of Britain were humming over their washing, the gatling guns and artillery of Empire were murdering the Sudanese….
The moral? Live in the heartland.
I think we need a combination of the two, a sort of 50/50 central control and individualistic appropriation of land rights for allotments and such.?
Interesting Tim: did they also chalk the doorsteps in the East End, like the Northern housewives?
I have to say, the super-fat working-class mothers in this village do seem pretty happy: they stop to natter to one another outside my house, desperate for conversation with other mothers after being banged up all day with their toddlers.
And the huge family over the road are a hoot: very loud, always amiably arguing, they are my private theatre, as real as Goldoni’s Venetians, as I read behind my yew hedge: no desperate anxiety over social status and investments that afflicts the middle-class everywhere, and never lonely or particularly angst-ridden.
It’s something snobs never get: it can be simply great being ‘poor,’ (relative Western sense) but not destitute.
I once worked in publishing with a true Cockney, Dave Smith: couldn’t start the day without his bacon sandwich, and was as straight as a die, totally loyal to those he respected (and he sized you up pretty quickly) and he never played office politics, he would have despised himself – rare in that environment. He gave up on the rat race to become a house-husband. By way of contrast, I saw the most despicable behaviour among the ‘well-bred’ of ancient families at Christie’s.
Do you happen to know when East Enders stopped going up to Hampstead Heath for the Bank Holidays? That must have been a sight, judging from the old photos.
The unhappiness levels in London today are almost palpable: no real trust. I hate going there now.
I never go there – unless forced by circumstance – and then only briefly – horrible place – it never held an attraction for me, but then I am a country bumkin in heart.
Xabier, I never saw any doorsteps being chalked in Olde London Towne. But just as the world over, in the young girls often chalked the pavements outside their houses to play hopscotch.
Hampstead Heath Bank Holiday fairs were among of the highlights of the year for Victorian working class Londoners. Apparently, middle class “spectators” would park their carriages along Spaniard’s Road to view the scene but few ventured into the crowds of rowdy revelers. By my day, smaller traveling fairs used to visit a number of parks around the city and although there were still fairs on the Heath, they didn’t attract the same amount of attention as formerly.
The other great Eastenders’ holiday was ‘oppinggoing down to the country for a week or two to pick hops, enjoy the fresh air and come home with a few extra shillings for the effort. Some Londoners still keep up this tradition. My sister-in-law used to go hopping on a farm near Lamberhurst in Kent, a picturesque village that wouldn’t be out of place in Midsomer Murders where Margaret Thatcher used to own a Mock Tudor country house.
Thanks Tim.
Had an excellent bangers and mash, with pudding, at the Spaniards Inn last September – lovely 18th century pub as you will know.
I used to plod past it on the way to and from Highgate when I was a struggling artist and worked for ‘Young Mickey Flower’ on that freezing hill (actually used to nip into the fridge to warm up!) as a way to make ends meet: he was florist, and what a real London name (he hated it, but that’s how they knicknamed people at the flower market).
Hmm, I feel a chorus from ‘The Good Old Days’ coming on. 🙂
https://youtu.be/DiWomXklfv8
Tim, I share your experiences. I was brought up in Luton in the 40s and experienced a similar environment with mother at the mangle, outside toilet shared with next door, and cold running water and gas lighting. This was in Buxton Road, Luton, I was 7 years old.
We have come a long way since then, thanks to the energy concentrated in oil, and the amazing techy advances to which I owe much of my current comfortable lifestyle. As to happiness, I do believe that this is not dependent on material wellbeing as long as you fulfill Maslow’s basic requirements.
For me, as a trained counseller, happiness is the ability to let go of fear, finding love instead. This book I use much of the time when counselling clients:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Letting-Fear-Gerald-Jampolsky/dp/1587611961
It works in most cases as long as the client is willing to do the necessary inner work. “It works if you work it” – as we say! Being comfortable in your own skin is the objective of the process – it is however not and end in itself but a means toward a more fulfilling and rewarding life.
Interesting: my approach is inspired by Beowulf and the epics of Old Europe: ‘Let go of fear, because you are doomed anyway: it’s all in the fight’.
Or as the Havamal of the Norse has it: ‘Men die, beasts die, all things die; but what survives (maybe) is your good name for the deeds you have done.’
A bit of love in there too, of course, but only for the right people. And dogs.
I’ve tried to be a Universal Love Christian, but just can’t manage it.
What happened to all those mangles? The mad Welsh poet and priest Thomas preached to his congregation in his little village about the utter sinfulness of washing machines, and the housewives among them used to mutter ‘That sounds nice’.
He died a defeated man. Modernity (and electricity) beat him.
Ah, that old koan, the washing machine. The greatest invention IMHO since electricity, but never let ‘her indooors’ know! I respect your efforts to match this mad world of materialism by retreating into a Christianity. I too have sought the grand elixir of life for most of my time in my earth walk.
But I did find sanctuary in a Friary in Cerne Abbas, Dorset UK-
https://hilfieldfriary.org.uk/
– in my ailing years. I went on retreat, twice, and found a recharging of my spirtual batteries enough to set me free for another few years apart from this mad world. I shall go again when the time is right.
Just now it is for me to spread my word on the internet and allow that if just one person picks up the theme – I have done my business. I have written a book about all this and much more; a free pdf is available on request to: peter@underco.co.uk
I like that phrase, Peter—In my ailing years. Was that your version of the long dark night of the soul?
I have a hunch that men also go through a sort of menopause in their fifties—possibly due to the decline in testosterone production—and that this knocks our hormone balance for six and we can no longer handle the stresses and strains that we took in our stride when we were younger.
Agreed Tim, I met my Armageddon in 1990 when the men in white coats carried me off to the funny farm (I was just 46) and managing my own very successful IT company. Perhaps that was my menopausal moment, who knows.
All I do know is that I recovered to discover another wonderful world outside that of business, and have continued to be happy in my own skin. I have written a book about the global financial system (Part 1) but Part 2 is more important and is in process right now – about how to cope in this mad world. You are welcome to the ‘Introduction’ pdf as an example of this restitution:
email peter@underco.co.uk.or the book complete Part 1.
PS
I was diagnosed Bipolar disorder in 2009, although I must have lived with it all my life and that explained alot! https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/conditions/bipolar-disorder/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIivbYu-ms4QIVyZ3tCh10TgF2EAAYAiAAEgJhfPD_BwE
The meds help immensly now, so sometimes I am actually sane, but my wife (my carer) might not agree!
I very much agree. When the construct of infinite prosperity disappears, we have a huge problem.
Or is it the reverse? My experience is that the construct of infinite prosperity (leading to or involving mistaking money for energy–as Norm Medium article suggests?) is what leads people to squander energy in the pursuit of mone. And the subsequent worship of financial programs over energy programs. Getting them off this religion of financial progress is what I find so unimaginably difficult.
We have a world that’s unaware of the end of more (due to extend and pretend policies). This is like people who don’t know the severity of the hurricane they face, with a government that hasn’t told them, and that has no evacuation plan. Being clear about what to expect, and having a “shelter” to go to is completely different from not having them. In terms of the energy economy, there are endless creative adjustments that can be made ahead of (or to soften) a crash. But the construct of infinite prosperity means people see no need for these adjustments (that are very simple and cost little to nothing).
“In terms of the energy economy, there are endless creative adjustments that can be made ahead of (or to soften) a crash.” Perhaps for a few people, there are creative adjustments that they can make, so that perhaps they and their families can hold out a little while. But for the vast majority, I expect that it would not be practical. Wind and solar don’t do enough, and they need replacement parts, plus batteries for storage. And subsistence farming takes a lot of effort and the right location. Farmers working with minimal tools and only the soil amendments they could carry walking with a wheel barrow likely didn’t do too well.
Might be something we could import from China?
I think that kind of amendments could be deposited directly on the fields.
If you want to deposit manure in fields, you need to have a way of growing a lot of food for the animals, then putting the animals on cropland after they eat the pre-grown food. Feeding plant-type food to humans is, in some sense, much more efficient, unless there is undeveloped land where the animals can graze. But getting the soil amendments back becomes difficult, if the animals are grazing on undeveloped land.
It really isn’t too difficult.
Animals poop where they graze, when they are grazing. That’s a feature, as they self-fertilize their own food crop!
But they aren’t out there all the time. The rest of the manure ends up where they sleep. This is what you gather and apply to food crops. By hand and wheelbarrow, it takes me about three part-time days, twice a year, to get what we need. (It might take someone one-third my age and experience a week or more, though. 🙂
With about a dozen goats, we can reclaim about eight cubic metres (yards) of goat manure mixed with bedding, which is about all we need for about an acre of crops. They are rotationally-grazed on about two acres. So a rule-of-thumb might be that you need 200% of your growing area devoted to animals for their manure. But keep in mind that those animals also produce other useful things, like milk, eggs, meat, fibre, and leather. Also, that ratio is for an area where they can mostly graze year-round; if you must put up a whole winter’s-worth of hay, the ratio goes up.
Makes sense. You need a lot of land for this arrangement.
If you have horses, I understand that they need grain, rather than just grazing. That adds another level of complication.
Not really. They do just fine on nothing but good quality grass.
But if you work them hard, a bit of grain helps them out a lot!
For most herbivores, grain is icing on the cake. They evolved to eat leafy greens, with the occasional, seasonal seed-head for some extra protein. But grain greatly increases their output, be it milk, or putting on weight for meat production.
Graining livestock has a lot to do with the current industrial livestock system. Grain is cheap to produce on mega-farms, using machinery.
In a low-energy future, I’d plant a field of sunflowers, instead. They have about twice the protein and three times the fat as most grain, but they are not amenable to industrial farming methods, so they are out-of-favour.
A small farming family can sit around and husk sunflower heads while they
watch TVengage in story-telling, song, and conversation.We used to have horses for some 30 years here in UK when we had our small holding and we did feed hay, grain, oats and processed nuts in the winter when there’s little grass and no goodness in it. They are fine in the summer on good grass although some grain helps if they are working hard. So in the New Economy we will need to provide supplements for our horses as you say Gail.
I don’t believe in any of these “solutions.” The idea of some holding out after a crash while the majority perishes is profoundly out of sync with my view of reality. As to wind and solar, nothing interests me less. I am the most primitive person alive, and don’t even know how to use a power tool. If I don’t believe in mass die off in any way, shape or form, it is because I am extremely in tune with a larger self organizing power that is beyond my reasoning, but not my intuitive, power to grasp. I don’t have the mind set of the “norm,” while trying to change the pickle it’s in. It simply cannot be done. I know exactly what I’m doing, and while a reasonable outcome in all this is much more than just likely. But that is based on faith, and faith is not something you can support with proof.
Ah, so true Artleads: “…….faith is not something you can support with proof”
I too share a faith and belief in a future, but then, it is already written it is said.
is your “higher power” going to helicopter “meals on wheels” to the masses? otherwise, how is he/she/them going to feed and save us? if you abandon logic in place of faith (and prayer) then why attempt to continue a dialog here?
I never said that the higher power was going to feed and save the masses. Where did you get that idea?
There may or may not be adjustments to how the end event takes place. For example, the death rate may skyrocket because lack of electricity makes water and sewage treatment impractical. This might be easier to deal with than endless years of fighting.
People who have been studying what early scholars have said (in many religions) will realize that sharing is important, as long as this is practical, as is comforting others within a person’s own group. People who focus only on video games will discover these are gone, as soon as electricity disappears. They need to make and nourish human relationships.
If there is a reward after death, it will occur completely outside this universe, in a way we don’t understand. People need the hope of this possible reward, even if (in reality) most (or all) of the reward is on this earth, in the form of better relationships with others and less anger about things that cannot be changed.
Some religions emphasize that if things aren’t going well, it is possible to leave a person’s old ways, and start over in a new direction. People addicted to video gaming and watching television will likely need to make serious changes to their lives, if they are to have any chance of continuing without electricity. Not having jobs or governments will be major issues as well. Anyone who wants to continue after the collapse is likely to need to make huge changes to his or her life. Dealing with this issue will be a major hurdle.
If desired, the scriptures of thousands of years ago show how economies of those times dealt with low energy per capita situations, and thus low complexity situations.
Any survivors will likely need to reorganize in ways that would seem bizarre, if a person has only the lifestyles of the last 200 years as a pattern of what might work. Women will need to retake their role as being primarily mothers and helpers of men, because of the high death rate of children. The physical strength of men will again become important. Even though these ideas seem distasteful in a high energy world, this is what the laws of physics dictate.
A great assessment Gail, thank you. In fact you have touched on the subject of Part 2 of my book, the ‘Introduction’ of which I have already completed (14 pages) and some of my readers have had a sneak preview. It focuses on the need for personal transformation in changing the vision of their inner world, created in the 21st century, to that which we know will be one that will be entirely different.
I should be most appreciative if you would look at my offering and be critical as to how far I have achieved my goal of enticing the younger generation to change their basic attitudes when the chips are down, and as you say, electricity is less available or perhaps rationed as in load shedding which my wife’s family are experiencing in Cape Town at this very moment.
Peter, you either have the answer inside you or you don’t. What ther people believe shouldn’t apply.
Others: People asking for specific answers of a quantified materialist sort must think the world is simpler than it is. You’re going to make a plan and you can count on it resulting–if only you could find enough cheap energy to do so–in the outcome you want. That is what seems like fantasy to me, since no specific outcome can be predicted in a networked global system of 8 billion people. Laws of physics would suggest that breaking down (which Gail’s logic can predict will occur on its own) would be better dealt with if you let go before you’re dragged. Using centralized reasoning for decentralized systems that you haven’t even begun to imagine, and apparently have never experience, will lead you nowhere.
“Using centralized reasoning for decentralized systems that you haven’t even begun to imagine, and apparently have never experience, will lead you nowhere”
You are quite correct to point this out Artleads, but I have no other reference point. Therefore I hope and rely on the ingenuity of man to determine the final systems required in a decentralised environment – it will evolve I guess.
“Therefore I hope and rely on the ingenuity of man to determine the final systems required in a decentralised environment – it will evolve I guess.”
Totally. I think the species is like a school of fish that can turn on a dime. We just never had to do it before. The scientist Rupert Sheldrake had interesting experiments done in that regard. A member of a species developing a new skill in NY can influence another member on the far side of the globe to pick up on the same skill faster than would otherwise be the case. “Morphic Resonance.”
WOMEN AND THE WORKPLACE
Gail implies that in a crassh situation women will manage better looking after the children in the home. Since I’m starting to think we have the need and ability–even in advanced industrial society–to follow (in principle if not in detail) a hunter gatherer lifestyle, I see a similar arrangement in some pre-civilization groups. Women do different things from the men. Men use their physical strength to hunt and do other specialized tasks.
The issues with that are numerous.
– Women are needed as equals in running the broader society, since they are better at cooperation and cooperation is going to be needed more than ever.
– A society that is totally deindustrialized is probably not survivable, so there might well be a balance between women working at home and women working in the industrial system who are good at managing cooperation, or simply have necessary industrial smarts.
– Some industrial infrastructure, like smokestacks, are incredibly male-symbolic, suggesting that women in high positions could be more innovative toward reducing harmful effects of emissions. That’s merely one of many examples.
– Taking cues from undocumented Mexican immigrants, we note a high level of community solidarity among the women. An unbelievable number of people live in a single apartment, and they manage through cooperation. Some women work out while others look after all the children in the group. (I believe these roles are based on ability, proclivity, opportunity, commonsense, not some rigid gender formula.)
Words of wisdom Artleads, thank you and I couldn’t agree more. I am optimistic that common sense and instinct will prevail engendered by the survival tactics of the female for the betterment of her children – the very essence of ‘family ties’ and sadly lacking in our artificial, modernist society.
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go on further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before”. -Albert Einstein
and the classic:
“If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman”. -Margaret Thatcher
I rest my case.
+++++++
Gail, my comment was directed at Artleads, but I appreciate your response. you are correct about the wisdom in the scriptures. people need to realize there is a lot of hardship and loss written in there, if only between the lines. it’s not really a lot of good news, going forward.
That is an interesting link you give. Britain is big enough that oil taxes have never been a huge part of funding. Yet having both the oil and gas helped the UK greatly, for a long time.
Now the UK is a major importer of oil and gas. That gets to be a problem. No wonder the UK has been so interested in pursuing renewables.
UK lives off ‘services’ i.e. scraps from the table from the City financial district, which is an autonomous enclave, legally separate entity from the state. And the City is obviously one of the primary dealer hubs of the global financial order.
Large part if not the entire Brexit brouhaha is essentially about the un-disrupted pass porting rights of City vs. EU continentals in this respect of above mentioned finanacial sector related services.
But several entities dropped spanner into this machine, be it various class-social and political, ethnic-national, and other factions of the UK, which for their benefit want to continue full (er) EU membership or vice versa get out of it.
California has a larger GNP than the UK—–
The penny will eventually drop that the UK simply doesn’t have the land area for ‘renewables’.
once a nation becomes a net energy importer, it’s game over
the UK had a reprieve when we found north sea oil–but now that’s running out
problem is you cannot make people believe the critical nature of fossil fuels
the certainty is fixed, that windfarms and solar panels will do just as well
it is a self imposed lie
Exactly.
Moreover, the North Sea discoveries served principally to keep the economically redundant, ‘post-industrial’ regions of the UK – those that had over-grown (from small town to industrial city in a generation ) during the Industrial Revolution – more or less alive on a kind of welfare drip-feed.
They should have emptied out long ago. What next?
Perhaps the UK as a whole should have emptied out: returning it to the hands of the Viking and Celt -descended hill and sheep farmers, the best and most independent, people around? The finest people in Britain, and they earn next to nothing these days.
On my private mental scale. they are at the top, together with real craftsmen; and estate agents, lawyers, media and marketing people at the very bottom.
why not give it back to the Romans?
and I’m sure the moors would like Spain back
Roman girls are generally rather pretty, I could accept their renewed domination…..
Actually, the Moors do want Spain back, having no sense of the flow of history like all fanatics.
ooooh i noticed
walking through central Rome is like one long fashion show
yummy
I suppose the first thing the moors will do is grab Gibraltar
It will be interesting to see how the large Muslim demographic in the UK responds to (any form of) Brexit. I’ll be watching from a fair distance.
Japan has done quite well as a net energy importer these past seven decades, Norman.
I would go as far as to say that being a net energy importer has been one of the key elements in that nation’s success. The smaller East Asian “tiger” economies such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are also energy poor and dependent on buying it from abroad. This hasn’t been a “game over” factor for them. On the other hand, quite a few net energy exporting nations have been through or are going through hell on earth. I’m thinking in particular of Iraq, Libya and Venezuela.
As long as the world can provide, individual countries that have something to trade can thrive without their own energy resources. Once the world passes peak energy, however, we can expect be a very different story to unfold.
The UK has huge reserves of coal under the North Sea that are accessible at less than extortionate prices with current technology. For political reasons, the nation has decided for the present not to make use of them or even to talk about them. You might call it a self-imposed silence. But if it proves to be critical for the UK to access these resources, I dare say it could be done.
I suspect that Japan’s huge government debt ratio is related to being a net energy importer for all of these years. The country has needed a huge amount of government spending and make-work projects to keep the economy going. The country of the most robots is also the country of a lot of service jobs that don’t really need to be done. Also road building projects with little possibility of adequate economic payback.
Are you forgetting the “lost generation” of zero- or negative-growth that has been going on since the late 90s?
I think Japan’s success was tied to cheap energy, whether imported or not. When that went away, they started exporting production to countries that still had it, leaving an entire generation with fewer job prospects.
japan. like singapore has been a net energy exporter, in that the energy embodied in materials has been imported then re exported on a world scale by being converted to higher net worth in the process
Japan has been exporting embodied surplus energy—its called profit
Japan/singapore could not survive by exporting food
Money is a token of energy exchange, people have been eager for shiny toys, so part with their money
a few nations can do this for a limited time
this can only go on as long as other nations (the majority) have sufficient consumption capacity (ie surplus net energy) in the form of food and/or resources to acquire those goods and keep the flow circulating
Well, coal from under the sea areas could be nice dystopia 4.0, have not thought about it, thanks. As you know coal also comes in different varieties, not sure about the carbon chain ‘purity’ of it there, also sulfur and metal content etc.. But given the larger lateral distances one would assume it should be remote (robot) controlled mining operation only (unfit for aircon and manpower), therefore the needed ongoing technological support base, perhaps a task for Musokvian types when turning the age of 60-70yrs and getting bored, no pun intended. Aren’t there enough surface lower quality brown coal deposits though? And I repeating myself again, in comparison mass produced nuclear ‘closed cycle’ would not be that much more cost disadvantaged at that point as well.. Anyway, this could be base for a nice sci-fi story, two empires against each other, one doing massive undersea coal mining with numerous autonomous ‘earth-seacoal-worms’ while the other recycling nuclear; that would provide ‘guaranteed’ several centuries of further dystopia, civilized people living near the Arctic circle only by that point..
It was actually one of the first questions posed by the very early economists: ‘Why is this state rich, when the land is poor; and this one poor, when its land is rich and fertile?’
What an excellent question. And I have no answer, perhaps those that are wiser than me can give you a reply?
Was it more efficient to leverage the coal, iron into ships of steel and sail off, stop at a given place with resources and say, “Can we talk?”
Are the rules of life maybe fixed? The discussions here have been going on for most of recorded history that we know of and it seems the problems are somewhat similar.
Camille Paglia has made comments on women doing laundry around a stream and laughing and singing; men seem to drink for relief. In Roman times apparently women of the court liked to consort with gladiators even though they were missing body parts but not that between their legs. It has never been easy to be a man, washing clothes was easier than war and there was good reason to sing.
Above it is noted that some of the men literally went into coal mines while their wives washed clothes. Hmm, maybe feminists should be careful what they wish for, washing clothes seems like a better job than working in a deep hole, sweating, farting and becoming injured through dust, collapse or alcohol abuse to kill the pain of having made it through another day.
Dennis L.
from personal experience, i remember my dad coming home black from the pit, until baths were installed later
pit filled his life, any miner will tell you its a love hate thing in all deep mines
conversation seemed to be all pit talk—grumbling mostly, yet you will see miners in tears when pits inevitably close
i went down several times, you could never call it a joyous place, but at the same time it was a place without fear in any sense at all—even for me as a kid
the energy in coal was always a trade item. and a refuelling item for the empire
look at british colonies dotted in a circle round the world, they were mainly coaling stations at the ports
Stunning description thank you Norman. I have lived far away from such places so this is even more enlightening. Jeez, how others live?
Peter
If you really want to be gripped by the power of such things
Read Germinal by Emile Zola—even if you dont read the entire book, read the intro pages on Amazon, you’ll be gripped by the first words
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Germinal-Penguin-Classics-Émile-Zola/dp/0140447423
probably the finest writing on the subject anywhere
Many thanks for this lead Norman, and I have ordered the book today – I look forward to a stunning read, the write-up is great. It’s all about education for me, but my reading list is getting longer by the minute!
““We designed Cassandra to assess the risk of domestic credit and financial crises,” said Rob Subbaraman and Michael Loo, Economists at Nomura. Using five financial metrics, referred to as early warning indicators, Cassandra has signalled over two-thirds of all financial crises that have occurred since the early 1990s… So Cassandra has a pretty good track record for predicting periods of financial turmoil.
So what nation is deemed to be at most risk right now? According to the metrics at the end of September last year, Hong Kong remains head and shoulders above the rest.””
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/financial-crisis-risk-nomura-2019-3
This is the image that is shown.
https://edge.alluremedia.com.au/uploads/businessinsider/2019/03/Cassandra-model-Nomura-Q3-2018.jpg
I am glad that the computer model shows no risk for the UK, US, Greece, and South Africa. But I am not sure I entirely believe it. It is true the problem may start somewhere else, but the contagion will spread around the world.
I don’t see Venezuela anywhere on their list.
“The struggling Australian property and stock markets have led to the biggest decline in household wealth in seven years, according to a Bloomberg report. The result highlights the pressure on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to resume slashing interest rates.
“Household wealth dropped 2.1% in the final three months of 2018, the largest decrease since the third quarter of 2011, said the Australian Bureau of Statistics.”
https://www.yourinvestmentpropertymag.com.au/news/wealth-hits-7year-low-due-to-property-slump-261734.aspx
“Factory activity in China likely contracted for a fourth straight month in March, a Reuters poll showed, suggesting the economy is still losing steam and adding to worries about faltering global growth.
“A downbeat reading, coming on the heels of the sharpest fall in industrial profits in at least 7 years, would underline the need for more stimulus as Beijing struggles to right the economy and end a bruising trade war with the United States.”
https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/28/china-march-factory-activity-seen-contracting-for-fourth-month-reuters-poll
A person wonder’s what China’s real growth rate is.
Mexico next? Mexico Becomes A Net Oil Importer
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-28/next-oil-domino-fall-mexico-becomes-net-oil-importer
Right!
Mexico has definite problems. According to BP data, Mexico’s oil production peaked back in 2004. Mexico’s per capita consumption of oil products seems to have peaked about 2000. About that time, Mexico must have figured out that natural gas could substitute for oil in some applications, and that approach would help it have more crude for exports.
Between 2000 and 2009, Mexico’s growing production of natural gas seems to have helped the country out. When Mexico’s natural gas production peaked in 2009, Mexico suddenly became increasingly dependent on natural gas imports.
So besides being a net importer of oil, Mexico is also a net importer of natural gas.
Mexico is also hurt by the fact that it its refinery capacity is not really up to date. This happened because the government taxed PEMEX heavily, leaving little money for PEMEX to improve its refineries and make investments in new fields. To work around the problem, Mexico has been buying refined products from the US at the same time it sells crude oil to the United States.
“The U.S. curve inverted last week for the first time in more than a decade as the 10-year yield dropped below the rate on the 3-month T-bill… Canada, where the yield curve also inverted last week, could be an alternative guide, even though its economy is one-tenth the size of the United States. Canada does not issue as many long-dated bonds as the U.S. Treasury, leaving that part of the curve to the provinces.
“While its market has not been directly impacted by central bank purchases, its economy is so closely tied to its southern neighbour that it rarely enters a recession without a U.S. contraction.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-canada-bonds-curve-analysis/recession-risk-canadas-curve-inversion-may-offer-clearer-signal-idUKKCN1R92AQ
“Canada’s merchandise trade deficit narrowed as oil prices rebounded at the start of the year, though the gap remains the second-largest ever.
“The nation posted a C$4.3 billion ($3.2 billion) shortfall in January, down from December’s record high gap of C$4.8 billion, Statistics Canada said Wednesday from Ottawa. Until December, Canadian deficits had never exceeded C$4 billion. The monthly trade gap has averaged about C$2 billion over the past four years.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-27/canada-trade-gap-narrows-on-oil-rebound-stays-close-to-record
SCIENCE
The Worst Disease Ever Recorded
A doomsday fungus known as Bd has condemned more species to extinction than any other pathogen.
ED YONG
Scheele’s team estimates that the fungus has caused the decline of 501 amphibian species—about 6.5 percent of the known total. Of these, 90 have been wiped out entirely. Another 124 have fallen by more than 90 percent, and their odds of recovery are slim. Never in recorded history has a single disease burned down so much of the tree of life. “It rewrote our understanding of what disease could do to wildlife,” Scheele says
The fungus hasn’t acted alone; humans have been its unwitting accomplice. A genetic study led by Matthew Fisher from Imperial College London suggested that Bd had originated somewhere in Asia. From there, one especially virulent and transmissible strain spread around the world in the early 20th century—a time when international trade was booming. Infected animals could have stowed away aboard ships, or been deliberately transported as food, pets, or pregnancy tests. Either way, the killer strain eventually spread to five other continents
https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/585862/
Yes, Global exchange has more implications than we can fathom….
What till one of these bactria, fungi or virus focuses on us people….🤡
We have a pig virus in China that we are currently struggling with, and a banana virus in some banana growing areas. I am sure that there are many others that don’t make the news.
Follow up and found this very interesting…
JAN 17, 2018
Rats Didn’t Spread the Black Death—It Was Humans
Scientists now believe the plague spread too fast for rats to be the culprits
Rats have long been blamed for spreading the Black Death around Europe in the 14th century. Specifically, historians have speculated that the fleas on rats are responsible for the estimated 25 million plague deaths between 1347 and 1351.
However, a new study suggests that rats weren’t the main carriers of fleas and lice that spread the plague—it was humans.
In a study published in January 2017 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers simulated Black Death outbreaks in European cities to try and understand how the plague was spread. In their simulations, they looked at three possible models for infection: rats, airborne transmission, and fleas and ticks that humans carry around with them on their bodies and clothes.
Proper ending to too many people that couldn’t control themselves….the invisible hand takes over
https://www.history.com/news/rats-didnt-spread-the-black-death-it-was-humans
Mexico just became a net oil importer, per SRSrocco report. Big trouble south of the border. That wall is not such a bad idea.
I am sure that Trump’s advisors told him about the issue, quite a while ago.
Even before Mexico became a net oil importer, Mexico was in a situation where it was paying more for oil products (such as gasoline and diesel) than the revenue received from selling crude oil. Mot a good situation! The situation is too much like having Venezuela on our doorstep.
Maybe Russia will send troops into Mexico. That should be fun.
Might be a bit late for a wall. There are 10’s of millions of Hispanic people already living in the US. I have to say though, I don’t mind them at all. They are great with their hands – that old world ability to make things, craftsman. I see them in all sorts of art production. I shudder to think what would have happened to the US if there hadn’t been Hispanic workers because white people don’t want to do a lot of the jobs they do. They’re only too happy to work at a tough menial job and raise a family on it. That should be a lesson to the rest of us. Also, most are really nice people. Only met 3 I didn’t like out of plus or minus 200 in all these years of working with them.
It’s the same here in UK. We have lots of E, European migrant workers and they too have wonderful skills and are generally great people. A Polish family live near us and they are delightful, especially when they invite us for drinks – the vodka flows like water but I have to mind my head in the mornings!
Sounds fun – nurse the hangover – thanks for sharing, Peter.
Gail is correct, after BAU shuts down, most will most likely deal with the likes of illness as so,
Teen dies of tapeworm egg infestation in brain
To learn more about his condition, the medical staff performed an MRI exam and saw damage caused by cysts in his cerebral cortex (the outer mantle of brain tissue) as well as the brain stem, including the cerebellum, which sits at the back of the head above the spinal cord.
Diagnosis: neurocysticercosis, a parasitic disease of the brain caused when someone swallows tapeworm eggs that have passed in the feces of someone who has an intestinal tapeworm. The larvae crawl out of the eggs and into muscle and brain tissues, where they form cysts.
The doctors also discovered cysts in the patient’s right eye and right testis.
Because of the number and location of the cysts, his doctors decided against treating the young man with antiparasitic medications. These can worsen brain bleeding and inflammation while leading to loss of vision. Instead, the patient was given an anti-inflammatory drug, dexamethasone, plus antiepileptic medications.
Two weeks after his arrival in the ER, the patient died, Dev and Abbas report
No doubt. without modern medicine, I would of not make it past 5 years old!
Pinworm, eye and ear infections, broken leg and fallen in a frozen pond were close calls.
When I lived in the Boston area, would roam cemeteries, many infant and child deaths in Colonial times. Now we see vaccinations not being given to children….???
Perhaps collapse “Black Swan” will be a something u expected!
TJ Gray, a Vietnam veteran and self-sufficienist, recently told us that EMPs are perhaps what worries him most in terms of a catastrophe that society would not be able to handle.
“Probably one of the greatest logical fears that I would personally have would be either a solar solar flare, which has happened,” Gray said. “They said the biggest one we’ve had was … about 1850, and they said if that solar flare hit today, it would take out virtually every electrical device in America. And that happened, it already happened once set, there wasn’t much electricity back then
On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order to protect against a electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that “has the potential to disrupt, degrade, and damage technology and critical infrastructure systems
Gray, who explained that he served in the Air Force and worked on chemical and biological warfare unit, added that “today we’ve got enemies that could hit us with a high altitude nuclear weapon that would give off an electromagnetic pulse that would fry all the computers in the cars, all of our electronic stuff. Your camera, your toilet. I mean it would knock everything out. It would knock out your water supplies, your fuel supplies. You’re grocery stores would be empty within two hours probably.
Gray first showed up on our radar from an internet forum devoted to ‘Preppers’ in Texas. He was known to be the lead moderator on the site, and other users said he had his own secret bunker somewhere in the Lone Star State. So Yahoo Finance reached out.
A quote from one of our emails:
“In the 1970s I had one of the largest Preparedness Companies in the USA, and the media loved the negative tern [sic], Survivalist. Designed to make you a weird wacko. I demanded the term Self sufficienist, so as not to fall into their pre planned negative spin. I hope you are self aware enough to understand that this is a common sense approach for those at this stage of their life, to take on this endeavor.”
After weeks of correspondence via email, he agreed to an interview and would let us film the bunker he built with his family in 1980 after he returned from the war in Vietnam.
Ihttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/bunker-life-prepper-doomsday-texas-205608883.html
Gary now lives in town and is thinking about selling the massive Bunker….
FE are you interested?
If it is not one thing, it is another. We keep building systems that depend on electricity. We somehow would like to keep it going, for as long as possible.
“On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order to protect against a electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that “has the potential to disrupt, degrade, and damage technology and critical infrastructure systems.”
I’m not disputing it can’t be done, just wondering how? Let’s say our TV is on and we get hit by an EMP, what is it that was done by that executive order to protect our TV?
It’s an executive order, Chrome. What is so hard to understand? The whole thing is underway despite the efforts of the deep state remnants to counter it via the new Russia conspiracies and that one post on reddit. Wikileaks will release secret documents soon that prove this executive tech also renders the tinfoil hat obsolete.
Venezuela’s blackout continues for a third day.
“Maduro admitted “tremendous damage” had been done to the national grid and asked Venezuelans to pray.
“Everyone should know that the damage that has been done is more severe than any Venezuelan can imagine,” he said, announcing that electricity “administration” would be necessary in the coming days.”
I noticed one article said that the loss of power had restarted, after seeming to be partly fixed.
Also, I thought that this article from OilPrice.com was interesting:
Venezuela Main Oil Port Shuts Down Amid Blackout
Too many peak oilers miss the point that electricity problem can cause oil problems.
The collapse will probably be much more complicated than anyone can imagine?
The people in Venezuela seems to be blaming their crisis on sabotage, incompetence, corruption and other human causes.
In an earlier age, they would have blamed it on evil spirits, witches and sorcerers -in fact, that is probably happening too.
well—the Don’s spiritual adviser says that giving her money will get you salvation
that is real medieval theology
Mark 11 . 24 Worth a read, the force is with you IF you chose to accept it.
It looks as if the electricity is back.
“Cities across Venezuela recovered electricity on Thursday after the blackout, the second major one in less than a month. Maduro on Wednesday night blamed the outage on a “terrorist attack” on the Guri hydroelectric facility that provides electricity to most of the country.”
What’s a little bit of water….NATIONAL
Air Force Needs Almost $5 Billion To Recover Bases From Hurricane, Flood Damage
The U.S. Air Force says it needs $4.9 billion in new funding over the next two and a half years to cover the costs of rebuilding two air bases hit by natural disasters.
About one-third of Offutt Air Force Base, in eastern Nebraska, was underwater earlier this month as flooding hit large swaths of the Midwest. And Tyndall Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle was hit hard by Hurricane Michael in October.
The Air Force is asking for $1.2 billion in supplemental funding for fiscal year 2019 and $3.7 billion for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. Congress would need to approve the funding
The Air Force fiscal year 2020 budget proposal is for $165 billion, Wilson said.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707506544/air-force-needs-almost-5-billion-to-recover-bases-from-hurricane-flood-damage
A couple of clicks on the computer mouse should provide the necessary funding….for now…
What’s a 5 billion more to a deficit over a trillion dollars!?
$15.63 for every single American man, woman, and child.
“The U.S. Air Force says it needs $4.9 billion in new funding over the next two and a half years to cover the costs of rebuilding two air bases hit by natural disasters”.
I just have to laugh at the insanity sometimes.
“Syrian warplanes took off from the air base hit by US cruise missiles yesterday to carry out bombing raids on rebel-held areas, in a defiant show of strength.
Just hours after the al-Shayrat airfield was bombed with 59 US Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from warships in the Mediterranean, aircraft struck targets in the eastern Homs countryside, according to a monitoring group”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/08/syrian-warplanes-take-air-base-bombed-us-tomahawks/
From Trump’s today tweet: “World Markets are fragile, price of Oil getting too high.”
Does Trump acknowledge maximum affordable price of oil?
Twitter is considering labeling Trump tweets that violate its rules
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/28/tech/trump-twitter-rules-label/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2019-03-28T13%3A31%3A05&utm_source=twCNN
But this may be valuable— we can get a glimpse on just how crazy Don The Con is.
Or how crazy Twitter’s rules are, and how much censorship goes on.
True- who would know the difference?
A person would think so. But then there is also the problem of lack of profitability of US oil extraction, if prices are too low.
Give him a day or two and he’ll say that we need higher prices.
The right people haven’t whispered in his ear or greased his palms yet, but they will.
http://priceofoil.org/2018/11/05/us-shale-companies-facing-catastrophic-failure-over-ballooning-debt/
Found this interesting…Mister DNA, in this case Ms. DNA, works in mysterious ways!
https://gizmodo.com/a-scottish-woman-has-lived-her-whole-life-without-feeli-1833618016/amp
The woman had previously been diagnosed with arthritis in her hip, which she didn’t feel despite the “severe degree of joint degeneration,” according to the paper. She lived a long life of painlessness before realizing something strange was happening, reporting dental surgeries without anesthesia, painless cuts and broken bones, and even burns in which it took smelling her charred flesh to notice something was amiss. She even told the researchers she could eat scotch bonnet chili peppers with no effects other than a “‘pleasant glow’ in her mouth.” Oh, and she rarely felt any sort of anxiety, depression, fear, or panic—not even during a recent car accident, according to the paper.
Her doctors recommended she speak the pain genetics team from University College London, who sequenced parts of her, her children’s, and her mother’s genomes and asked them about their pain tolerance. The culprit appeared to be a small set of missing DNA in the FAAH-OUT “pseudogene,” essentially degraded versions of fully functional genes once thought to be “junk” but which often do have a role. The woman also had a single switched nucleotide (the DNA building blocks) in her FAAH gene, the one responsible for an enzyme called fatty acid amide hydrolase. Previous studies have also shown that people with small variations in their FAAH gene have less anxiety and feel less pain.
May be a necessary attribute after BAU…
Or maybe people without adequate pain sensitivity get killed off early, because they don’t feel the pain of injuries, so don’t move away quickly enough.
And also perhaps develop less ingenuity in trying to avoid pain and discomfort? Which is surely one of the key drivers of civilisation.
“The battle waged by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against currency speculators is a classic pyrrhic victory. The show of resolve by the self-styled strongman on Wednesday stopped investors from dumping the lira but at enormous cost in both the short and long term. That Turkey will be damaged is beyond question.
“All that’s in doubt is how severe that damage will be and whether the fallout will be felt elsewhere. Looking at the fragile state of the global economy, there’s every chance it will be.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/27/turkey-may-be-the-spark-that-lights-a-fire-in-the-world-economy
What if it works in the short and long term? Will the economist offer a retraction?
The head of the oil departement of IEA visited Norway recently and praised the remarkable comeback of norwegian oil production. A 40 % incease is predicted in the years 2018 – 2024, mainly due to the opening of the new field Johan Sverdrup. He also commented on the development of more efficient technology since the drop in the oilprices in 2014. The new field Johan Castberg in the Barents Sea – to start production in 2022 – needed before 2014 an oil price of 80 dollars to be profitable. Now the price needed is down to 35 dollars. I am curious how this remarkabe turnaround relates to the discussion of a (falling) EROI on this site?
https://www.nettavisen.no/okonomi/energitopp-neil-atkinsonoverrasket-over-norsk-oljecomeback/3423634731.html
“development of more efficient technology” thanks to massive debt leverage (across the industry not only .no) ..
Several thoughts come to mind:
(1) Do these amounts include taxes? Taxes tend to be a large share of total costs, but are not considered in EROI calculations. If a government sees that global oil prices are down, it may reduce the tax level. In fact, the tax code may state that the tax rate varies with the price of oil. in general, the higher the price, the higher the tax rate.
(2) There really are cost breakthroughs. For example, if the company can use co-produced natural gas to power its operations, this is likely to significantly reduce costs (but not necessarily Btus consumed), if the prior fuel was oil that had to be refined, and brought to the location. In the US, co-produced natural gas is used as much as possible, to cut energy costs.
(3) The price of both natural gas and oil are both down since 2014. The lower prices of these fuels affects the cost of drilling pipe and other supplies. They, of course, also affect the cost of any fuel used in drilling. These lower prices will tend to make total the total costs of production fall.
(4) Subcontractors are likely to experience cost savings as well, and pass them along as lower prices for activities such as renting drilling rigs.
(5) It is possible that wage concessions were made possible, because of the low prices of oil. (Also not part of EROI.)
(6) Interest costs are part of total costs (but don’t affect EROI calculations). To the extent that recent interest rates are down, these would help reduce well costs.
I am no expert in the matter, but as far as i know:
1. The norwegian taxsystem is the opposite of fixed royalties per barrel, i.e.its based on the profit, and the state takes in between 60 – 80 % of the profit, no matter if the price is 40, 60 or 100 $. All production have to pay carbon taxes.
2. The Johan Sverdrup field is not going to use natural gas at all – it`s going to be electrified with cables from the mainland, where the electrisity is produces by hydropower plants. This solution is not going to be applied on the Johan Castberg – because it`s to expensive.
The Johan Sverdop field is supposed to start producing in 2019, according to Wikipedia. The field with the low production costs is the new Johan Castberg oil field, which will start production in 2022. You tell me that the Johan Severdop field is powered by hydroelectric, sent by cable from the mainland. I can believe that this approach is expensive. The cost of the cable from the mainland, by itself, is no doubt high.
I found an article about the low costs of the Johan Castberg oil field. These are a few of the reasons for the low cost identified in the article. Some of my other items from my other comment (such as lower oil and gas prices since 2014 being reflected in a lot of things that are purchased) would also be true.
Item 1. According to the article “In mid-2013, however, the investment decision was delayed due to uncertainties over the tax framework and the reserves range.” I expect that the tax framework does indeed play a role, but we lay people are not going to be told what exactly its role is.
Item 2. The initial studies were based on a semisubmersible platform exporting oil through a subsea pipeline to a new onshore terminal at Veidnes in northern Norway. The new design is a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel (that looks like a big boat), plus shuttle tankers to the shore (instead of building a pipeline).
https://aemstatic-ww2.azureedge.net/content/dam/offshore/print-articles/Volume-78/11/1811OFFcast-p01.jpg.scale.LARGE.jpg
Item 3. The new design makes use of the waste heat from the turbines doing the oil and gas extraction.
Item 4. The natural gas that is always co-produced with oil will be put to use, rather than flared or shipped by pipeline. The story says “The Johan Castberg FPSO will be the first offshore application of Siemens’ SGT-750 gas turbine – a 41-MW version will drive a compress train that will re-inject the field’s gas to pressurize the oil reservoir.” I would presume that some of the natural gas will be burned to power the facility as well. I know offshore platforms in the US typically burn associated natural gas for power. This is an inexpensive approach. (Waste heat can be used directly for heating as well.)
Item 5. Another key feature of the VXT development has been challenging standard maintenance concepts for subsea trees to help meet cost-saving targets, Lundheim said. “The results in this area are as impressive as what we have achieved on the tree and system side. Some of the innovations that have enabled these results include condition-based maintenance, re-use and standardization of tools; optimization of operations; and condition monitoring.”
I would point out that we don’t really know yet what the costs will be, or whether the plans will work. But they do seem to be cheaper than building a lot of fixed infrastructure. Piping gas to Norway is probably a losing proposition. Reinjecting it, or burning it for use on the vessel, is a better idea.
It looks like they are pulling all the tricks to make it more cost effective. I especially like the part on cutting down tree maintenance. It sounds like a potentially costly accident will happen with that one day. That this field requires all of this to be profitable, reveals a lot. The low cost oil no longer exists.
“The European Central Bank has reached the end of the road. It no longer has the monetary levers or the political authority to launch another ‘shock and awe’ rescue if the eurozone tips into recession. Mario Draghi tried valiantly to bluff his way through the ECB Watchers conference on Wednesday, laying out his surgical toolkit should the worst happen. “We are not short on instruments to deliver our mandate,” he said.
““What instruments?,” asked Ashoka Mody, the former deputy-director of the International Monetary Fund in Europe. “Aside from its jumble of words, the ECB has nothing else to offer.”
“The eurozone’s 5-year/5-year forward inflation ‘swaps’ have collapsed over the last five trading days…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/03/27/mario-draghi-has-let-deflation-take-hold-now-impotent-spectator/
“European initial public offerings slumped to their lowest since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in the first quarter of 2019, as uncertainty over Brexit and the U.S.- China trade dispute leaves companies not wanting to take their chances.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-ipos/europes-share-listings-plumb-10-year-low-as-companies-seek-alternatives-idUKKCN1R81JO
“Car production in the UK slumped by more than 15 per cent in February, according to new figures… Year-to-date, overall output decreased 16.8 per cent and while home demand fell 8 per cent, the majority of the decline came from the fall in manufacturing for export, down by -18.9 per cent.”
https://www.insidermedia.com/insider/national/car-production-in-february-slump
“The single most worrying issue in the European economy right now is the ongoing collapse of German manufacturing. Last week, another raft of factory sentiment data came out and the charts look ugly: Analysts are saying things like “grim,” “misery,” “horrific,” and “this is a serious recession warning in the German economy.””
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/this-is-a-serious-recession-warning-in-the-german-economy-2019-3
“Italy’s Economy Minister Giovanni Tria said on Wednesday he feared the ongoing economic slowdown at a global level could trigger a new financial crisis. “Everybody fears a financial crisis can translate into a global economic crisis […] My opinion is … that the economic slowdown, especially if it were to worsen, could lead to a global financial crisis,” Tria said at an event in China.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-economy-italy-tria/global-economic-slowdown-might-trigger-new-financial-crisis-italys-finance-minister-idUSKCN1R81FI?il=0
‘Horrific’?
Not exactly Berlin, 1945, I’m sure.
But the Germans need a jolt out of their complacency: too good, for too long, at the expense of others. They must think ‘life’s a cabaret’….. 🙂
I think it is noteworthy that a major UK newspaper with some very astute financial journalists is now running a ‘Global Recession Watch’:
“The era of rising interest rates is over almost before it began as the world’s leading central banks prepare to hold or even cut rates this year and next in a bid to stave off a new economic slump.
“Central banks in every G7 nation will take no chances with higher rates, according to new forecasts from HSBC. But analysts fear that, with interest rates already very low, there is little central bankers can do to avert a future crash.
“It comes amid growing fears of a recession, with economists chopping growth forecasts for the globe.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/03/27/global-recession-watch-no-rate-rises-g7-central-banks-battle/
“Across the world’s financial markets, bond yields have been sliding as investors jump into sovereign debt and the expectations are growing from New York to Sydney that central banks will be cutting interest rates before they ever raise them again. The Fed’s action collided with mounting concerns about Europe’s economic health…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/global-bond-market-has-been-spooked-and-big-interest-rate-slide-not-likely-to-be-over-yet.html
“…there are numerous… storm clouds on the horizon: global trade wars, Brexit, weaker growth in China (around 6 to 6.5 per cent, compared to 14 per cent in 2007) and rising volatility in financial markets across the world. Then there are the unexpected “black swan events”, which we cannot, by definition, anticipate. Yet the real cause for concern – and indeed the reason that QE was necessary in the first place – is the debt mountain that looms over the global economy.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2019/03/new-global-recession-getting-closer-and-world-woefully-unprepared
“Global markets are more complex and interconnected than ever. Since the 2008 financial crisis, it’s become increasingly difficult to predict how the behaviour of market participants will affect the broader financial system. Meanwhile, increased automation and the use of high-frequency trading have contributed to flash crashes. We struggle to manage the rapid market movements that rest in the hands of fast-moving black boxes working at nanosecond speeds.
“With this in mind, traditional risk modelling, which historically relies on forecasts, is no longer capable of capturing the dynamics of electronic markets. As such, it is no longer suitable for mitigating risk.”
http://www.cityam.com/275373/preparing-black-swan-event-financial-markets
Really, it is the low return on investment that is the ultimate problem. With a very low return on investment, businesses find it almost impossible to find investments that will pay an adequate return. Pension plans find that their funding assumptions go badly wrong.
Et tu Brute – We are all in the same boat. Or for my friends abroad:
estamos todos en la misma situación
Go well!
I saw a comment this morning on “Daily Shot” saying that the time lag between (a) 10 year interest rates falling below short-term interest rates and (b) the time that stock market prices start falling could be as much as 30 months.
So why yield inversions tend to predict recession, the recession doesn’t necessarily start quickly. There are lots of moving parts.
The bond market knows Harry, they have never been wrong in the past
Some high profile economists have taken an initiative to adress, as it seems, almost all of our problems.
«The tools of economics are critical to developing a policy framework for what we call “inclusive prosperity.” While prosperity is the traditional concern of economists, the “inclusive” modifier demands both that we consider the whole distribution of outcomes, not simply the average (the “middle class”), and that we consider human prosperity broadly, including non-pecuniary sources of well-being, from health to climate change to political rights. To improve the quality of public discussion around inclusive prosperity, we have organized a group of economists—the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) network—to make policy recommendations across a wide range of topics, including labor markets, public finance, international trade, and finance. The purpose of this nascent collective effort is not simply to offer a list of prescriptions for different domains of policy, but to provide an overall vision for economic policy that stands as a genuine alternative to the market fundamentalism that is often—and wrongly—identified with economics.»
https://bostonreview.net/forum/suresh-naidu-dani-rodrik-gabriel-zucman-economics-after-neoliberalism
My slightly cynical view is that the economists need something else to fill their journals with. With so many people writing, and with some of the past predictions not coming out well, there is a need for a new approach, about which we can create new metrics to write about.
“Inclusive prosperity” would seem to be possible only if energy consumption per capita is very high and use of capital goods is quite low. It works in the opposite direction of adding robots. It also seems to work in the opposite direction of international trade. I see it as being pretty much impossible, in a world of depleting resources.
Russian River Brewing’s 2019 Pliny the Younger release generated $4.16 million for Sonoma County
https://www.sfgate.com/beer/article/Russian-River-Brewing-2019-Pliny-the-Younger-13717680.php
As a former resident of Sonoma, this was doable in the past–but it has been discovered.
Not that much of a beer drinker, but this was worth the effort 6 years ago.
Even the pub in downtown SR is a hassle now.
With all the fabulous local Sonoma wines (but the tasters from out of the area are a drag), why bother?
Alcohol is a occasional libation these days—
But non drinkers die earlier– so why not live a while longer?
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/health/medical/study-finds-non-drinkers-die-earlier/ar-AAyZRMN
(Psychologist Charles Holahan, who led the study, found mortality rates were highest in people who had never had a sip of alcohol, slightly lower for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.
Out of 1824 participants, only 41 per cent of moderate drinkers died early in comparison to 69 per cent of non-drinkers)
these kind of studies tend to pop up, but this effect has been linked to the social interaction of moderate drinkers, simply these tend to be socializing creatures (longevity boost), while heavy drinkers or non drinking ultras are sort of outcasts..
Agree- there is a social influence.
And apparently, non drinkers have very unhealthy lifestyles.
Sometimes (often?) non-drinkers are taking one or more medications that say, “Do not drink alcohol when using this medication.” The medication or the underlying disease may be raising the risk of death. With the number of prescription medications people in the US are taking (“one for every ten decades of life” is a rule of thumb), this is no small issue.
Some protective effects from the statins and antioxidants in the red wines, especially as part of the Mediterranean diet which result in increased longevity?
yep, that seems to be the largest contributing factor..
Not really—
But they are a good factor.
Red wine is a Life Infusion, certainly. Even the sight of the stuff in a fine cut-crystal glass is cheering in a gloomy world.
Although it was said in Olde England that cider was a source of longevity: true or not, it was observed that the peasants who drank a good 3 pints daily were significantly jollier and kinder than the tea-totallers who came after them.
I rest my case.
thats because plain water was death in a jug
Good point! Water treatment plants did not come until much later.
I hate water – fish make love in it!
well—as long as you dont act like a fish out of water
True, it must have been: but it seems that wine was always drunk mixed with water until recently, except in Germany and other Northern countries, it seems: they were despised by the French as drunkards. How to explain that? Rather puzzling…..
Red wine is the best–
But if you are paying even minor attention, you will discover the study was on alcohol.
Comprende?
I think alcohol in reasonable quantities on a daily basis is a good sugar-denier,so the toxic effects of the western high-carb/sugar diet is mitigated to an extent. i suppose that it has some effect on cardiovascular health as well. This reminds me, I need to get my..err.. biofuel distillery license 😉
You can rest well, dear friend. I live in Somerset, UK the heart of cider country and regularly visit one of the few remaining traditional cider houses in Witham Friary (Nr Frome). It is true to say that the clientel are jolly and hospitable at all times, especially later in the evening when the Cheddar cheese and cider go down so well!
We’ve got 200 litres of perry aging, and about 50 kilos of goat cheddar aging. That should last us a short spell. 🙂
sounds more fun than being a vassal of clan Mc Gibbs
WOW! Jan I envy you. I had a small holding for 20 years in the late 70s -90s but downsized in 95 to retire and then left for South Africa. I came back to Bruton in 2009 when I was 65. to claim my UK pension but my SA wife loves it here so much we never left. I miss the small holding and she misses her family and RSA. C’est la vie.
I am so lucky!
The biggest requirement was that my wife wouldn’t move too far from her kids. I told her you can walk up the 700 metre (2000′) mountain behind us, as see them, just 50km (30 miles) away! But of course, it takes some two ferries and an international border crossing — about five hours of travel — to actually get there, so we don’t get too much “mamma do” time.
One family is working on immigration. They’ve all told us to expect them if tSHtF in the US.
My wife is actually a much better farmer than I, at least with horticulture. I tend to do a lot of the animal care, and she takes care of the plants.
Why can’t you pursue a small holding in the UK? (BTW: congrats on the latest Brexit vote. You guys are on the bleeding edge! Soon, all mega-nations will be falling apart at the seams.)
Yep, I could pursue a small holding again but I am too old for the heavy work and lack the capital (sadly depleted due to low interest rates and inflation), to actually buy more land.
So here we are in our 2 up 2 down little Somerset cottage just living well but wishing to be in RSA.. Still, we are happy and my wife can chat, ad nauseam, to her sister in Cape Town on WhatsApp, thank goodness for the techy boys! And the garden in spring is a delight.
I too loved the animals and worked well with the goats (my wife did the milking) – what lovely characters they are! It was sad to cull the young billies, but the freezer gained their meat, and we had wonderful Sunday dinners with friends that I said we were eating “English Lamb” and they knew no different! But I did confess later, to much chagrin!
And my homemade wine, using gooseberries, came out much like Liberfraumilch, and I didn’t dissuade the guests – having bottled it in the appropriate labelled bottles. Much more to tell as we seem to be following a parallel course.
And BTW if you need help with immigration, I have worked with CAB for many years, so do let me know if you or yours need help: peter@underco.co.uk I work pro bono, being retired and all that.
Some thoughts/quasi-reply to the BAU derangement club.
No one on this blog – from what I can see – says that mass immigration is “good” i.e. sustainable, welcome etc. or that the problems created by it in Europe should be ignored because doing otherwise is raycyst or Is_lamophobic by definition.
The problem I have is with the *real* bigotry of various stripes that has rallied under the nebulous banner of “anti-immigrationism”. Juking stats to dehumanise millions. This is the faschist/neoliberal death instinct par excellence. A bit of poison for pleasant dreams, and much in the end for a pleasant death, to paraphrase Nietzsche on the Wagnerites.
The idea should be that in our finite world 8 billion people cannot live like the wealthiest billion. Ferraris are not fungible enough to be converted into food, electricity and fuel for an equivalent amount of money, so moar equality for moar people – while a good idea per se – has its limits just like everything else. Instead it’s about cherry-picking “the brutal facts” that shock and imply hardship/inconvenience for everyone but oneself.
For the ecosystem at large, neo-classical economics serves as a rationalisation for plunder.
Well, it’s a can of worms isn’t it, as there are various kind of countries/societies badly affected (or potentially threatened) by incoming mass migration, countries which for example did not have contributed previously to the situation, e.g. not having colonies, empires etc.
Sorry, ‘dehumanizing millions’ is just a meaningless slogan, as alluded before the tribal territorial ‘natural’ response is simply to deny trespass (or chance of first attack) to foreign and populous invasive threat.
I do understand and acknowledge that there are underprivileged and oppressed masses (for various reasons) but should I perform suicide just to ‘extend help’ towards them on unreasonable scale and pace. Again, no way, sorry.
The world changes and as it changes it impacts on each of us. We don’t have to like it and it’s OK to have a problem with it.
And it’s OK to throw away cheap insults like “bigot”, “f*scist” and “r*cist” at people who are uncomfortable with what mass immigration of people from incompatible cultures has done to the places they used to call home, if it makes you feel smug and morally superior, which is—you’ll admit if you”re honest—the main reason you do it.
As a young and middle aged man, I would go back to the old country (Blighty) or write or talk to friends and relatives there, and I would find myself feeling very uncomfortable with the degree of real fear and loathing many of them expressed towards the growing numbers of immigrants from warmer sunnier lands who were increasingly filling up its towns and cities. At the same time, I realized that the natives increasingly had good reason to fear and loathe the newcomers both because of numerous incompatibilities going well beyond the inability to play cricket and because the newcomers were becoming increasingly hostile to the natives.
White Europeans have been given administered such a guilt trip that may decide to commit collective suicide any day now, or they may decide to organize and do something really f*scist, or anything in between. And whatever they do, they cannot be condemned because they are FUBAR thanks to the constant tsunami of propaganda they’ve been soaked in ever since Edward Louis Bernays perfected his brainwashing techniques. And that’s a factoid.
it is an unfortunate fact of life and living, that come shtf time
distinct groups are bound to polarise
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/three-wise-monkeys-royalty-free-image/186545793
I guess the policy here is to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
Let’s just agree that people and that includes everyone are giant douches.
“I guess the policy here is to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.”
Only when one gets overly specific or confrontational, in my experience. Which is understandable, and after all it’s Gail’s blog.
https://media.tenor.com/images/a304d450faa97cf1bcc512ef82b5215e/tenor.gif
A post I made in reply to you was removed after being up for a short while was why I referenced the see / hear / speak no evil. I did not see how my post was confrontational given the topic. Granted it may have been specific in that no one is special and that humans have great capacity for evil. One would think on a blog that discusses the possibility of the end of civilization as we know it the people who come here would be thick skinned enough to have a discussion on hefty topics such as racism (which I concede in its rawest form is bad). Part of that discussion would need to look at the roots of it and the roots of it consists with individuals, the groups they associate with, etc.. Once that had been processed I will reiterate that it will boil down to people being douches which you should cheer because douchbaggery is color blind and culturally insensitive.
Sorry, I removed one of jupiviv’s comments, and yours was in response to his comment, so the system removed it automatically. I didn’t intend to remove yours.
My post (which you might have responded to) was deleted too. No point in making such a fuss about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ICiQKdO-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQhtAh-SJM
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rwandan-refugees-pass-on-july-18-1994-by-the-corpses-of-news-photo/483196067
Peak Whitey?
White man goes berserk ‘over a taco’ in California Mexican restaurant: ‘We’re in America, not Spanish!’
https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/white-man-goes-berserk-over-a-taco-in-california-mexican-restaurant-were-in-america-not-spanish/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtkX3OyPF4Q
The solution is obvious – we need more maps!!
Not to get off topic, but if any readers (lurkers) are starting to get stressed they might consider the latest article from Catherine Ingram: Facing Extinction. I’ve been collapse aware for at least 15 years and the article puts in words exactly how I feel. Acceptance stage. I’m thinking about sending the link to my son to explain why I don’t seem over-excited to be a grand-father now.
The only point I disagree with is her interpretation of recent events in France with the ‘Yellow vests’. Unfortunately there is no comment section at her site.
Eh, don’t count us totally down and out yet. Human civilization, and the global climate are too intricate for anyone to know how this is going to ultimately turn out. While we are undoubtedly in for a bottleneck this century, its not at all clear to me that we are heading to extinction. The Earth has been significantly warmer before. Somehow we still ended up with ice ages. The climate didn’t cook off the atmosphere and turn us into Mars. There may be negative feedback loops to which we are completely oblivious.
Beyond that, none of us was ever getting out of here alive anyways. Every human currently alive will be dead 120 years hence, even if it is smooth sailing and BAU. Your grandson may well die from climate catastrophe or starvation. Or he may die from old age, after continuing your family legacy. If you think the road ahead may be tough, why not devote your efforts to preparing him to be tough and resilient. That way he can face his future as well as he possibly can, regardless of the outcome.
“Eh, don’t count us totally down and out yet. Human civilization, and the global climate are too intricate for anyone to know how this is going to ultimately turn out.”
While I don’t disagree with that there are some underlying issues we need to be concerned about. They are insect die off, animal die off, fish die off due to pollution, over fishing, plastics and garbage being dumped in the ocean. Then there’s ocean acidification, ocean dead zones, coral reef die off and plankton die off. If any of those three are eliminated (ocean, insects or animals) so are we.
“Then there’s ocean acidification, ocean dead zones, coral reef die off and plankton die off. If any of those three are eliminated (ocean, insects or animals) so are we.”
Don’t think you understand the premise of this blog. If humans have the power to change the climate then we are losing that power very very fast. As we run out of viable fossil fuels our pollution effect will become minuscule. The Earth will survive us if that gives you any peace of mind.
In the famous words of George Carlin, that’s correct and that’s what I meant to say.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/251836-we-re-so-self-important-everybody-s-going-to-save-something-now-save
You forgot to mention the polar bears. I remember when they were high up on any doomer’s list of concerns.
https://polination.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/polar-bear-and-al-gore-meme.jpg
Perhaps we can thank All Gore or…..
1973
Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway and the former USSR signed the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears and their Habitat, strictly regulating commercial hunting.
The US Government classified the Polar Bear under its Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Today
Today, polar bears are among the few large carnivores that are still found in roughly their original habitat and range–and in some places, in roughly their natural numbers.
Although most of the world’s 19 populations have returned to healthy numbers, there are differences between them. Some are stable, some seem to be increasing, and some are decreasing due to various pressures.
https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/population/
And ….from the above
Northeast Canada and Northern Greenland when all other large areas of summer ice are gone. This “Last Ice Area” is likely to become important for polar bears and other life that depends on ice.
A projection of sea ice in the archipelago, supported by WWF, shows that much of the region is facing significant ice loss in the coming decades – with potentially serious consequences for polar bears.
Global polar bear numbers are projected to decline by 30% by 2050.
Projections and models out to 2050…? Meh
That why scientists collect data and see evidence of changes …map a trend and project…
It’s what science does….it’s useful in supporting theories, like the theory of Gravity.
Yeah, it is called unregulated hunting. Trying to mislead, eh ?
Not me , just do a quick search…
Dunn’s Sport Hunting has been offering polar bear hunting over the last thirty years throughout the Arctic. The last ten years we have continued working several regions in the Arctic, but have specialized in the village of Paulatuk. This is the South Beaufort Sea population of bears.
The South Beaufort Sea Paulatuk has one of the highest populations of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic. This quota is based on bear populations. The overall hunting success rate for Paulatuk is virtually 95 percent
Notice the quota is based on Bear populations!
And it will cost you plenty
OTHER POLAR BEAR HUN PRICING
NUNAVUT $43,950 to $49,950
(10 Days)
ULUKHATOK $33,000
TUKTOYAKTUK $30,000
SAMANTHA LUCAS $30,000
PAULATUK $21,500
https://dunnssporthunting.com/dunn-Polar%20Bear%20Hunt-224.htm
Seems it is regulated now, helping the Polar bears.
Karl, the Permian was an extinction event. 90 something percent of all life went extinct. The carbon was sequestered hundreds of millions of years in FF and we have been releasing a big chunk it for 150 years. The major concern is the knock on effect of possibly releasing CH4 from the arctic seabed which would be a tipping point event initiating runway you know what, eventually followed by anoxic oceans releasing toxic gasses into the atmosphere that rain down causing widespread extinction. We are headed in that direction, but its probably more likely we’ll have some kind of economic dislocation, followed by a human die off, followed by localized economies scratching out a hard scrabble existence.
Or, another possibility is fusion becomes viable or some other scenario we can’t foresee now and things continue as usual. But I do agree extinction is not anywhere near a certainty. To ssincoski, bless the grand child and cross your fingers.
My favourite is that aliens descend from Alpha Centauri and give us the secret of infinite, zero-point energy.
Seems just as plausible as infinite growth on a finite energy supply, right?
Pls refer – read up on previous conversations under older articles, there is enough fission stuff of known existing NPP technology for next .7-2k yrs.. Is it going to be utilized (wisely) or at all is one of the questions at hand.
Yes, the earth has been significantly warmer than it is now, but about 96% of marine species and 80% of vertebrates became extinct during that time (Permian Extinction event). The cause was global warming caused by massive releases of volcanic gases and yes, millions and millions of years later, there were ice ages. The earth has never been as warm as it is currently as long as humans have been alive.
Honestly, I don’t have a clue, but in MN, it was cold as the dickens this year and snow is still on the ground in Rochester. I do not read news, but it seems Nebraska is having flooding, etc. So if the volcano in Yellowstone blows, do we blame the white male and if so for what?
Life does not appear to be deterministic, for as long as I have followed the alarmists which has been too long they have been wrong.
Best advice came from Gail, enjoy today, I did, three hours of dance lessons, much joy and happiness over nothing but movement to music.
Many years ago while in the research labs of Madison, my adviser, mentor gave me a piece of advice which was simply, “The most important thing in life is to have something to give to.” it has worked since 1969 which is longer than the alarmists have been right starting with Paul Ehrlich.
For point of fact, I wasn’t there during the Permian so my flatulence wasn’t a factor.
Dennis L.
Check out Paul Beckwith on YouTube.
While I don’t doubt that the earth was warmer before, I have to ask how many humans were around to see it? I also have no doubts that a few will squeak thru this bottleneck. I posted the link in an effort to get people to come to grips with it and not waste energy freaking out.
I am actually considering going back to the US for the sake of my grand-children. I’m happy here where I am, but if I can sell the property and go back without being a burden on anyone, I would. They are in Montana now – much better than the previous location.
Pre-humans seem to have gotten through the ice ages. It seems possible that at least a few humans will get through a future bottleneck, if other mammals do.
I agree Gail. I have an undying belief in the ingenuity of man (or woman). WE will transend the coming crisis, but perhaps a lot fewer of us!
don’t care who gets through the bottleneck
as long as i and mine own are included
Ah, my good friend, are you not of the chosen few?
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-did-jesus-mean-by-many-are-called-but-few-are-chosen/
as long as i get to do the choosing
with a spot of rapture thrown in for good measure
:-))))))
This is exactly what I have done Karl. I have written a book, primarily for my children, about the coming crisis and Part 2 (to be published later after it is clearer how events transpire) contains advice and tips about surviving during the New Emergent Economy which I forsee as coming about after a period of chaos and culling.
You are welcome to a free pdf copy of my manuscript – email: peter@underco.co.uk OR for more information have a look at:
https://www.gofundme.com/fnahvp-free-book
With respect to the Permian extinction, species extinction, and ocean acidification, I’m in agreement the problems are severe, and that we have likely altered future ecology forever. I don’t worry about it though, because there I nothing I can do to change the trajectory of Global history. I don’t even really blame humans, we are acting in accordance with the rules of life, which is compete, multiple, ad occupy every ecological niche. We flatter ourselves by thinking we are better or different than any other species.
Neither am I a climate change denier. I don’t see how our industrial ( and honestly, preindustrial deforestation and agriculture) activities could not have had a big impact on nature. My point was only that the purpose of life seem to be the continuation of ones family (or dna, if being less sentimental). I think the biggest bottleneck in our species history is coming, and comparatively soon. I am 39 and am exiting my (realistic) reproductive period. From nature’s perspective, my continued existence is irrelevant. Having given up delusions of BAU retirement planning, what gives me purpose now is preparing my children for the bottleneck. They may not make it through, but it won’t be because I was derelict in my duties as a father.
Lastly, I expect any descendents I have to live in a degraded world. Lions and tigers and bears may be the stuff of fairytale s. That is sad. But then, I don’t often think of the loss of mammoths, and dodo birds and sabre tooth tigers. I still find the world beautiful and worth living in. I suspect future humans will as well.